Let me tell you a story about facing survival with patches of fabric. A member of the Coastal Quilters Guild of Santa Barbara and Goleta brought a quilt back to life. This ‘rescue’ quilt, RH called it, begun on Zertta Marquiss’ Prairie homestead almost 125 years agor.
The house and barn, built in 1901, stood on a dreary plain on a frontier homestead. Zertta’s husband picked the 169 acres near Rosette, Wyoming. The work-filled ranch of crops and livestock on the American Prairie stretched before Zertta’s 24-year-old eyes. Ten years lay ahead of her living on that homestead with her husband Barney and five children. Years of struggling against forty degrees below zero winters, blizzards, prairie fires, grasshopper plagues, and drought. She relied on this desolate place where neighbors lived miles away, and her talent for needlework.
A woman needed help out on the great Prairie in 1901. Zertta’s older sister joined the family, and Zertta’s youngest girl learned to do “inside” work, such as making clothing, curtains, quilts, and drag carpets. When the females of the homestead weren’t too tired with their many chores, they took up “fancy” work, fine applique work. They considered quilts functional, used for warmth, economical, but Zertta wanted to bring a semblance of gracious living to the Prairie. She saved her favorite pieces of fabric, storing them to make her best quilt one day. The original squares Zertta’s cut from her curtains, old clothing, dating from the first quarter of the 20th century on that Wyoming homestead.
The Story Continues
Its origin story began on the Prairie but finished in Santa Barbara by another expert needlewoman. This quilt features unique early 20th century fabrics. The birth of the quilt on a homesteaded during a forty degree below Wyoming winter differs quite a bit from its finish in sunny seaside Santa Barbara.
The quilt, finished by RH 125 years after Zertta cut the first fabric squares, will go on exhibit at Earl Warren Showgrounds October 5 and 6 in the Harvest of Colors show.
RH, a member of the Coastal Quilters Guilt of Santa Barbara and Goleta, conveyed to me the scenario of homesteading on the prairie described in a letter from Zertta’s granddaughter Dorothea. In this letter she tells us that Zertta cut those squares for her quilts for a lifetime. She made a special test mini-quilt. The original “block” is the small center completed appliqued design square in the finished quilt saved it in an old trunk. That key to the quilt enabled RH to follow Zertta’s design concept.
Zertta’s training as a needle woman began as one of ten children in Broken Bow Nebraska at her family-run boarding house. Her talent grew during her married life. Her hands never became idle during the Great Depression. During WWII she supervised the County Work Room on the third floor of the Courthouse as women made quilts for wounded soldiers and sailors. Zertta’s granddaughter Dorothea remembers returning from school to witness the huge wooden quilting frame in the living room, women quilting at the four sides.
Grandmother’s Quilt
Zertta, towards the end of her life, came to California to live with her grown daughter and family. Dorothea, one of four children, remembers both mother and grandmother too busy to finish piecing the squares into a sewn quilt. So the pieces sat in a trunk, waiting. When Dorothea inherited the trunk of quilt blocks in 1991, she took a quilting class but never tried to finish Zertta’s quilt.
When RH received the quilt block pieces as a gift she decided to finish the quilt in honor of Zertta (born Iowa 1877). Many fabric squares cut during Zertta’s long lifetime of 83-years seemed unsuitable together, geometrically speaking. RH found vintage fabric at garage sales and finished Zertta’s quilt as a “rescue quilt.” She wrote me that a person can save dogs, cats and even bunnies, so why not a quilt? This quilt has been preserved as a bit of American Frontier History. The value is beyond my estimation!