One More Quilt: A Story of Life
Chapter One: The 1950s

As I gazed upon the bright calico fabrics and ran my fingers across the soft muslin channels of quilting, I could only ponder what inspired these proud Southern Belles to parade across my maternal great-grandmother Idabelle Edwards' quilt. If only these twelve ladies with their parasols perched over their shoulders could tell me a little something, but they cannot reveal.

Maybe they represent the women who might have gathered to put quilts together in the spacious barn where the quilts were left behind. Maybe they represent the women who gathered in the kitchen of the farmhouse in the mountains of Nayland, Tennessee in the 1950s. Maybe these women put the teakettle on and quilted during the cold winter months. Maybe this was their time for friendship and family to gather. I like to think that is the way it was.

Idabelle Edward's first marriage was to Emmett Lacy in Crawford, Tennessee and they had two children: Ethel Victoria and William.

Idabelle's second marriage was to Monroe Byers and they lived in Nayland, Tennessee and had four children: Maudel Kathleen, known as Kitty, Ridley, and Stella and Della, identical twins.

Idabelle's third marriage was to James Absten and they lived in Twinton, Tennessee. James Absten had four children by his previous marriage: Henry, Cordell, Pearl and Rosalee. Together, Idabelle and James had five children: Bernice, Harold, Mildred, James and Mabel.

Of these descendants, Ethel Victoria, my maternal grandmother, and Bernice, my great-aunt, are the two that I know.

Many, many years ago, my grandmother Ethel and my great-aunt Bernice were raised together in the mountains of Tennessee, half-sisters, living with relatives. Ethel and Bernice met two brothers, Ralph and Frank Janette, from Connecticut who were traveling through Tennessee. Ethel and Bernice married these brothers and moved to Connecticut and raised their families.

Ethel and Ralph lived in West Haven, Connecticut and had six children: Delores, Ralph, Mary Lou, Gail, Roberta and Thomas.

Bernice and Frank lived in Hamden, Connecticut and had three children: Daniel, Linda, and Dennis.

During the summer months, Ethel would take her children by Pullman train to visit with relatives in Tennessee and bring trunks full of gifts, mostly beautifully dressed dolls, and then quilts - usually string quilts, Victorian crazy quilts and patchwork quilts - were exchanged. During Christmastime, these relatives would mail many, many packages to each other.

Lois, Mildred's daughter gave the Southern Belle quilt to great-aunt Bernice, when Bernice and Ethel went to Idabelle's funeral in April 1973. While Ethel and

Bernice were attending the funeral service for Idabelle, a few women stayed behind at the farmhouse. There was a group of relatives that thought that Ethel and Bernice were uppity and had lots of money just from being from the North. These women were spiteful, petty jealous, ignorant and selfish and didn't want Ethel or Bernice to inherit anything.

While the funeral was being attended, the entire contents of Idabelle's farmhouse and barn was packed up and sold at a local flea market. Apparently, the quilts and quilt tops were also sold. When people returned to Idabelle's home, it had been ransacked and was completely empty. How and why this could have happened is utterly beyond my perception. What a huge loss and useless sense of suffering that needn't have been. Idabelle's home was willed to Mildred, but the property just sits to this day - uninhabited.

I am thankful that there was one quilt from Idabelle that was saved, just so I could see it and touch it.

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The quilt top with the red birds with fan tails was a gift to great-aunt Bernice by Mildred. Bernice went to Tennessee, three months before her mother died, to visit her father who was ill at the time and Bernice stayed until he died. Because of her dedication and helpfulness, she received this quilt top.

Nine identical quilt blocks were machine sewn together with red sashing and a yellow connecting square in each corner. The black wings, the black beak and the vibrant red fabric of the pair of birds were blanket stitched with precision.

A circle of turquoise flowers with green stems and leaves surround the pair of birds and are also blanket stitched to the quilt block. With careful embroidery of the eyes and feet, the blocks were completed.

The muslin fabric of the quilt blocks is high quality and each block is twenty inches.

I have the quilt top in my possession and have promised to finish it for great-aunt Bernice. I'd better get stitching!

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