Mary Bird's Quilts

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Mary Bird's Quilts
Sixty-six years of quilting, and my mother's before mine

My name is Mary Bird. I am seventy-eight years old and I have lived most of my life on this farm a few miles outside Ardmore, Oklahoma, where my husband Sam and I raised wheat and cattle until he passed in 1993. My mother taught me to piece a quilt when I was twelve years old, in 1933, and I have been piecing and quilting ever since.

I keep the family's quilts. This August my granddaughter Nicole was home from college, and she had a little camera that puts the pictures on a computer diskette. One morning she hung the quilts out on the clothesline one at a time and took their pictures, and then she sat at her computer and I told her what to write. So if there is a mistake on here, it is hers. (She says to tell you that is not true.)

Here they are, oldest first.

The Crazy Quilt
Pieced by my mother, Rena Roach · Quilted: it isn't; backed and tacked · Made 1912

Mama made this the year before she married, when she was twenty-two. It is made of whatever was too good to throw away: scraps of her good dresses, velvet and taffeta and silk, and neckties from her daddy and her brothers. A crazy quilt doesn't have a pattern. You just fit the pieces together the way they want to go, and then you cover every seam with fancy stitches. Mama knew a different stitch for every seam, feather stitch and herringbone and chain stitch and ones I never learned the names of.

Most crazy quilts were never meant to be slept under, and this one isn't quilted at all, only backed with sateen and tacked through at the corners. It lay across the back of the settee in the front room when I was a girl and we weren't allowed to sit on it. Some of the silk pieces have split, which is what old silk does, and that is why it only comes out for company now. Like this.

The Double Wedding Ring
Pieced by me · Quilted by Mama and the ladies of our church · Made 1939-1940

Sam Bird asked me to marry him at Christmas of 1939, and I started this quilt the week after. Every girl I knew made a Double Wedding Ring if she could. It is a hard pattern, all those little curved pieces that have to come out just so, and I ripped out more seams that winter than I have in all the years since. The arcs are scraps from my dresses and Mama's and my sisters', and the pink squares where the rings cross are new goods from town.

When the top was done, Mama and the ladies at church put it in the big quilting frame in the fellowship hall and quilted it in a month of Tuesday afternoons. It was on our bed the night Sam and I married, in June of 1940. We had fifty-three years. Nicole stood off to the side for this one so you could see the wheat field behind it. That field has been in wheat since before I came here as a bride. It was cut in June, so what you see is the stubble.

Grandmother's Flower Garden
Pieced by me · Quilted by Mama and me · Made 1943-1946

This is my war quilt. Sam went into the Army in 1943 and was in Europe until the fall of 1945. Flour and chicken feed came in cotton sacks then, printed with flowers and checks and all kinds of patterns, and you picked your sacks at the feed store by the print. When you had one you liked and needed two more to match, you traded with the neighbor women. Every hexagon in this quilt was a feed sack once.

The hexagons are about an inch across. You baste each one over a little paper shape and whip them together by hand, one at a time. I cut the papers out of old catalogs. I sewed at night by the lamp after the chores, and I made it a rule to finish one flower for every letter I got from Sam. There are a lot of flowers. Mama and I quilted it together the winter after he came home. Nicole put this one over the porch rail because she said it looked like it belonged there, and I think she is right.

The Log Cabin
Pieced by me, on the sewing machine · Quilted by me, by hand · Made 1964

I made this for our son Donald when he went off to college in the fall of 1964. Every block starts with a little red square in the middle, which is the hearth of the cabin, and then you build strips around it, light on one side and dark on the other, like logs. How you turn the blocks makes the design. This way is called Barn Raising, and Donald picked it because he said it looked like a target.

Donald lives in Oklahoma City now, and he brought it down for the pictures. It has been washed more than any of the others and it shows, and that is how it ought to be. A quilt that's been used and washed soft is a quilt that did its job.

At My Quilting

That is me. Nicole snuck up on me. I used to quilt at a big frame in the spare room, but my back won't let me sit at a frame anymore, so now I use a hoop on my lap in my chair by the window. I quilt about two hours in the morning while the light is good and the house is still cool. People ask how many stitches to the inch. I don't count. Mama said if you are counting your stitches you are not watching them.

The Lone Star
Pieced by me · Quilted by me, in the lap hoop · Finished July 1999

This is the newest one. I pieced the star last year and quilted it from January to July, and I put in the last stitch on the seventeenth of July. A Lone Star is one big star made of hundreds of little diamonds, and every diamond has to be cut exactly right or the star won't lie flat in the middle. Nicole counted them for me: five hundred and twelve. I went from yellow in the middle out through the reds to blue at the points, like a sunset going over into night.

It is spread on the bed in the front bedroom for now, but it belongs to Nicole when she finishes school. I told her that means she has to finish.

How I Take Care of Old Quilts

Never store a quilt in plastic. It can't breathe and it will yellow and mildew. Wrap it in an old cotton sheet or a pillowcase instead.

Take your quilts out and fold them along different lines a few times a year, so the folds don't wear through.

Keep them out of the sun, and off bare wood. Lay a sheet in the bottom of a cedar chest first.

Air them on the line on a dry day in the shade instead of washing them. Not on a windy day, and never the old silk ones in the sun.

When you must wash one, do it by hand in the bathtub in cold water with a mild soap, rinse it well, and dry it flat on a sheet on the grass. Don't wring it, and don't ever send it to the dry cleaner.

Use them. A quilt in a closet is no good to anybody.

A note from Nicole: Hi everyone. I'm Grandma's granddaughter. I took these pictures on Saturday, August 14, with the floppy-disk camera I bought for school. I hung the quilts out one at a time first thing in the morning before it got too hot, and Grandma sat on the porch and told me to mind the corners, every single time. The colors on the screen aren't as good as in person, especially the Lone Star. Grandma has never used a computer and says she isn't going to start now, but she loves hearing from people. If you write to us, I'll print your letter and mail it to her, and I'll type up her answer. Thanks for looking at her quilts. They're the best thing in our family.

Visitors to the parlor:

Write to Mary (by way of Nicole):
[email protected]
Last updated Sunday, September 19, 1999