The Clausen Quilts
This has been a red letter week. It has also been a pink polka dot week, a yellow kitten week, and a blue tulip week. On Wednesday evening, Pauline (our “other mother”) arrived with six of her mother's quilts. For you new readers, her mother was Gertrude Clausen, and these are the Clausen Quilts! In my house! I almost had the fire marshal come inspect the place before I let them stay overnight here – the quilts, that is. The rest of us are probably more replaceable.
(Before I go on, let me share another cute thing my younger sister Lora said when she was little. She and my dad were driving home from buying milk at Williams Dairy one day, and they had to stop when they saw Mrs. Clausen, to let her cross the street. Mrs. Clausen didn't see them, and The Barn said to little Lora, “We have to be careful. We don't want to run over Mrs. Clausen.”
“Oh, no, we don't want to do that! I'd rather run over Pauline than run over Mrs. Clausen!”
I can't get enough of those little Lora-isms. But back to the quilts...)
Pauline's dear friend Ellen Kinsinger chauffeured her to my house. When Ellen married in the '70's, she moved onto the farm across the road from “Gertie” Clausen, and she has been close to the family ever since. Ellen's daughter Emily is Pauline's god-daughter, and Pauline gave Emily one of her mother's quilts. It is a Rob Peter To Pay Paul quilt, done in pink and white. Pauline says she remembers her mother working on that one when Pauline herself was just a grade school girl.
Though I knew it was practically impossible, I was sorry that Pauline's sister Thelma wasn't able to come for the quilt turning at my house. It occurred to me that she would miss out on all the fun, so we hastily put together a little memory book. Just about everyone who viewed the quilts signed the book. It was the only thing I could think of for Pauline to take back to Thelma to include her in the fun.
We tucked ourselves into bed Wednesday evening in preparation for The Big Day on Thursday, and awoke early enough to eat a leisurely breakfast and set out the cookies and lemonade. At 9:00 a.m., the appointed hour the quilt turning was to begin, the doorbell rang. By 9:30, there were five women in the house, and we had the quilts spread out in layers over the elongated dining room table. It only took once through the quilts for Pauline and me to get into a rhythm. We noticed we could fold them all, one by one, back towards the north side of the table for about three rounds, then we'd have to fold them similarly towards the south side of the table to equalize the shift in fabric. This technique prevented the quilts from scooting floorward on one side, instead centering them on the table as best we could.
Some of the viewers stayed for an hour or more, remaining through several turnings. We had a lull during the noon hour and the supper hour of about thirty minutes each, but other than that, Pauline and I showed those quilts from 9:00 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Neither Pauline nor I were bored. We were tired, but we weren't bored.
I didn't know until this viewing that Mrs. Clausen hand-stitched every bit of the quilts, including piecing the muslin on the backs, and the sashing between the blocks on one quilt (Dresden Plate). She even attached the bias binding by hand – yes, you heard me – attached the binding by hand – then by hand again, she laid it down on the back of the quilt. Unreal.
These quilts are rare for many reasons. In the first place, they are made entirely by hand by one quiltmaker. This is a current concern of mine – we aren't making very many quilts from start to finish by one quiltmaker. Quilts from our era of quilting made this way will be rare, too, even if they are machine pieced and/or machine quilted.
Secondly, the six quilts displayed at this turning were all made in the 1970's and 1980's, and for the most part contained fabrics from the 1960's through the early 1980's. There are a few feed sacks in there, but no reproduction fabrics -- they are all original runs. I swear, one of those prints was worn by Lulu in “To Sir With Love”. Her last quilt, the Dresden Plate, was made in 1986 at age 89. Mrs. Clausen lived to be 93-years-old.
At the point in history when these quilts were made, there began a falling away from traditional quilting, and a coming of age of modern quilting. More people were beginning to buy fabric just for the purpose of making a quilt. Calicoes were popular, and big, fluffy polyester batting psyched some into thinking nostalgically of feather beds. For a period, flatter, more traditional batting, was used less often.
None of the fabrics that were used to make the designs in these quilts were bought for the purpose of making a quilt. These fabrics were used in garments, aprons, curtains, pajamas, whatever. Pauline was always sewing and giving her mother fabric. The Peg gave her scraps left over from the Home Ec classes she taught at Charles D. Evans Junior High, and from the garments we made at home. Mrs. Clausen would swap fabric with her neighbors in rural Hedrick, Iowa. By whatever means she collected them, she collected them, then used them artistically in her quilts. Mrs. Clausen did purchase white muslin for the background and alternating blocks, as well as the backing.
Thirdly, these quilts are technically impeccable. Every point is sharp (I kid you not), and the quilts have no waving borders, no bunched-up blocks, no detectable error to the human eye. The potential for error is multiplied by the number of pieces in each block, and the number of blocks and set-in pieces needed to make each queen-sized quilt.
Fourth is the notable design sense of the quiltmaker. Mrs. Clausen would fussy-cut, so that, for instance, the whole pink elephant would be in the Grandmother's Fan “petal”, repeated twice according to her exacting pattern. A butterfly block would have a whole daisy centered into two little one-inch patches, where it fit the pattern of the Butterfly Quilt. 1 1/4" patches in the Postage Stamp quilt contained the words and phrases of their fabric: Hug Me, Kiss, Cool It, Life. The unifying centers of the Dahlia Quilt repeat meticulously throughout the quilt top, though each single dahlia was completed in the same fabric, and the fabric of each isn't repeated again anywhere in the quilt. She integrated dimensional quilting into the Dahlia Quilt, and she didn't appliqué her Grandmother's Fans – they were pieced in background fabric to the end of the block. She added black embroidered antennae onto the butterfly blocks, equi-distance apart so that she could handquilt a flower motif in the background three times; once on either side of the antennae and once between the antennae.
I can watch a fire for hours, flames dancing seductively across my unwaivering gaze, popping noises heard yet going unnoticed. Oceans and lake waters soothe me. I watch them journey in and out, back and forth, sensing both a free motion and a mission. These quilts do the same thing – I looked at them non-stop, all day, repeatedly, and they changed, they danced, they popped, they journeyed. I became an honorary Clausen. It was pure joy.
Plans are in the works to make these quilts available for more viewings. I will post here when they will be shown again, and when Pauline and Thelma will be at the showing. We won't put them through the exhausting day Pauline had here on June 23, 2005, but if you come to the viewing, you will get to meet them, see their mother's quilts, and feel like an honorary Clausen, too.
Thank you, Pauline, the Onerheim Other Mother whom we all love dearly, for sharing your mother's quilts. And next time, we'll be sure Thelma is there, too.
Copyright © Kari E.O. Burns June 2005
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