Odessa Deutschesfest Vintage/Antique Quilts Show - September 2013

It's that time of year, again: Deutschesfest. All year, we've been looking for old and older quilts to hang in the 100+ year old St. Matthew's Church in Odessa, where we live. This year, our old church got a facelift of magnificent proportions: New Paint, New Sign and a NEW ROOF! It looks absolutely wonderful and good for another 100 years, God willing.

Inside, the sanctuary is the setting for the quilt show and a special photography show (new, this year). On the Sunday School side of the building, members of the Association of Germans from Russia maintain a genealogy research room.

As the ball fields fill up with RV's, as the city park fills up with campers, as every available spot is occupied by more RV's and campers, we all crowd in and enjoy our annual celebration of everything German: food, music, culture, art, and craziness. Oh, and a little beer (RIGHT!). You can read more 

about Deutschesfest here.

Here is our guild's banner quilt, designed to hang at the entrance of our annual quilt show (every April in Odessa - you can enter a quilt from anywhere in the world) and at this antique/vintage quilts show. See the little quilters all around the quilt, adding their tiny stitches. That's us, all year long, quilting away on our bi-annual raffle quilt. Every other year, our raffle quilt is a hand-quilted-applique' quilt (which we spend at least a year quilting.

This coming year's offering will be our version of "Aunt Milly's Garden". We call it "Mildred's Garden" in honor of Mildred Diefe, one of Odessa's greatest quilters and teachers, who passed away earlier this year, in her 90's. Mildred taught in the public schools for many years. When she took up quilting, she began to teach that, too. Many area quilters fondly remember Mildred for her great and cheerful sacrifices for them in lending her time and talents to bettering their education and understanding on a wide range of topics.

 Here's the quilt all set up and being quilted at the show. Isn't it a treat? Write to me, if you'd like to buy a chance on it. You don't need to be present to win.

And now, for the old, antique and vintage quilts.........

Quilt Name or Pattern:  “Kewpie Dolls” (a popular doll in the 1930’s)

Made by: Alice (Luiten) Wraspir

Quilted by:  Alice (Luiten) Wraspir and Elizabeth Luiten

Date Completed:   Nov 1934

Quilt history or other interesting information about the quilt and its maker:

Alice, Harley’s mother, made this quilt for his birth in February of 1935. Her mother, Elizabeth, helped.

 Quilt Name or Pattern:    “Irish Medley”

Made by:   Hilda Arthur

Quilted by:    Hilda Arthur

Date Completed:     c. 1929

Quilt history or other interesting information about the quilt and its maker:

 Jack Arthur’s father was Irish, hence the green shamrocks. Pieces of material from other projects were used.

Along in front of the altar was a lovely little display of photographs by Jana Kay Jasman, of Odessa. She is an up-and-coming local artist and her photos of area scenes are wonderful.

Quilt Name or Pattern:    “Lambkins”

Made by: Jackie (Werts) Helm

Quilted by:  Jackie (Werts) Helm and her mother, Peal Chase Werts

Date Completed:   1942

Quilt history or other interesting information about the quilt and its maker:

This quilt was made for a daughter and grand daughter's birth.

Quilt Name or Pattern:   “Fan”

Made by:  Louise (Wilskie) Heimbigner

Quilted by:   Louise (Wilskie) Heimbigner

Date Completed:    unknown

Quilt history or other interesting information about the quilt and its maker:

Louise was a prolific sewist. She made many quilts, crocheted many Afghans and doilies. She also made dolls for the grandchildren. When she wasn’t sewing, she made wonderful German meals for her family.

Quilt Name or Pattern:  “Bow Tie”

Made by:   unknown

Quilted by:    unknown

Date Completed:     unknown

Quilt Owned by:    Lise Ott, co-owner of Experience Quilts! quilt shop in Odessa, WA

Quilt history or other interesting information about the quilt and its maker:

 I found this at an estate sale in East Wenatchee. I felt an immediate connection with it, which is weird since I don’t really care for pink. It had obviously been loved in the past. I knew it needed to be loved in a different way now.

Quilt Name or Pattern:   “Embroidered Child’s Quilt”

Made by:   unknown

Quilted by:    unknown

Date Completed:     unknown

Quilt Owned by:    Lise Ott

Quilt history or other interesting information about the quilt and its maker:

A yard sale find – the lady said her neighbor had had it for years, but didn’t know much more. It was stained and dirty and unfinished, so, probably, isn’t all that old, but it charmed me. 

Quilt name or pattern: Dresden Plate – “Grandma Carol’s Quilt”

Made by: unknown

Quilted by: Lillian Starkell

Date Completed:  1949

Quilt history or other interesting information about the quilt and its maker:

This quilt was made for Grandma Carol by her mother, Lillian Starkel. Grandma Lillian handquilted it out of dresses the girls wore growing up. She gifted it to Carol when she married Herb Spies. 

Quilt Name or Pattern:    “Grandmother’s Flower Garden”

Made by:   Lillian Starkel

Quilted by:    Lillian Starkel

Date Completed:     Mid 1970’s

Quilt history or other interesting information about the quilt and its maker:

 Grandma Lillian made quilts for all of her grandchildren in order of their births. This was the third one made of those.  

 Quilt Name or Pattern:   “Fan”

Made by:  Louise (Wilskie) Heimbigner

Quilted by:   Louise (Wilskie) Heimbigner

Date Completed:    unknown

Quilt makers and owners connections to Odessa, if any:

Louise came to America with her family as a small child. They were German emigrants from Russia. The family first settled in Ruff, Washington, then, moved to Odessa.

Quilt Name or Pattern:   “Lone Star”

Made by:  Louise (Wilskie) Heimbigner

Quilted by:   Louise (Wilskie) Heimbigner

Date Completed:    unknown

Quilt Owned by:  Louise’s great grandson

Quilt Name or Pattern:   “Embroidered Flower”

Made by:  unknown

Quilted by:  unknown

Date Completed:   unknown

Quilt history or other interesting information about the quilt and its maker:

This  was purchased from an antique dealer in the Wenatchee area.  

Wasn't that fun? Don't you just love old quilts? Aren't you inspired to rescue the next one you see at a yard sale? I am, truly. Next time, I'll show you our latest quilt patterns for Fall Market. Yes! We've been working our little fingers to the bone!

Bye, for now......

Here is the third one of the old quilts made by my grandmother, Ruby, in the 1960's. It is a Dresden Plate Diadem Setting. This quilt is in the poorest condition of the three. We plan to have it repaired eventually. You can see some of the damage in the following pictures.

The biggest problem for this old quilt is that the edge stitching around the shapes has come out. Also, some of the pieces seem to have been ripped off completely. Still the quilt is bright and vibrant. I see a couple of the fabrics from dresses my mother made for me as a little girl in this quilt as well as the other two posted yesterday and the day before.

Some stories about my grandmother's life are in the earlier blogs.

The homesteads in Toole County, Montana, where my grandparents, great grandparents and great aunt lived, were miles apart, because families were homesteading whole sections of land (640 acres). One day Ruby rode out on her pony to visit neighbors who had been expected at a gathering in town the day before. She took her little dog, Gip, with her. No one had seen the neighbors for a while. When she arrived, there was no one around the farm at all and the stock had not been fed. All were thirsty for water and hungry for food. She went up on the porch of the house and knocked at the door.

No one answered. She knocked again and again but no one came. She went over to a window and looked in to see what she could. It was hard to see through the dirty glass but what she could make out was a big shock to her. She ran to her pony, jumped up on her and galloped as fast as she could home. It appeared to her that everyone in the house was dead. There were several bodies in the room she had looked into through the glass. When the authorities sorted it out, the father of the house appeared to have shot his wife and five children, then, turned the gun on himself. Ruby had known them all.

There were hard times on the high prairies, always. The wind blew constantly and, at times, fiercely. Ruby said many times, "Everything blew away....." The families, first, built a house on the land and made the required improvements for ownership, gradually. During the first five years, while they were "proving up" on the homesteads, they lived in Shelby during the winter. As soon as the Allens could afford it, they moved to Portland, Oregon, where some of the Steele family lived. Ruby couldn't get her laundry dry, she said, so they moved up to Spokane, where the climate was drier. She liked Spokane very much and it is a beautiful spot, still, today.

Well, I'm going to go stitch another memory or two into a quilt. Happy Stitching!

Ruby's Old Double Wedding Ring Quilt

Ruby Mae (Steele) Allen's "Double Wedding Ring" quilt hanging in the 100 years old St. Matthew's Church in Odessa, Washington, this past weekend. The quilt was hand-pieced and hand-quilted by Ruby (1889-1989) in the 1960's. This is the first time the quilt has ever been shown publicly. Three quilts survive from her work: this one, the "Flower Garden" shown in the previous post and a "Dresden Plate Diadem Setting" which will be shown tomorrow on this blog. Below is a portrait of Ruby as a young woman in War Road, Minnesota, about age 16.


See the history of Ruby's life in the previous post for more information. Ruby was an avid gardener in her years in Spokane. She planted about 40 trees in her yard on East 29th, she said, to make up for the barren prairie years in Montana. She grew flowers in border beds all around the yard, especially for Memorial Day each year. Her iris and lilacs graced the graves of all those who were buried in the city. She gardened until she was about 96 years old. She made her last quilt for her great grand daughter, Erin, in 1982.

Grandmother's Old Flower Garden Quilt

This past weekend, at our annual Deutschesfest celebration, my grandmother's Flower Garden quilt was shown for the first time ever. This quilt was hand-sewn, hand-pieced and hand-quilted in the 1960's by my grandmother, Ruby Mae (Steele) Allen. Here is a detail and a photo of the whole quilt.



Historical Information

Ruby (1889-1989) was born in Olmsted County, Minnesota, and died in Spokane. She came west to Montana in 1906, on the train, and took up a homestead, for herself. She brought her little dog, Gip, with her on the train, but the baggage man forgot to put the little dog off with her luggage. She ran after the train, shouting for her little dog. The man threw the poor little dog off the train. It was unhurt, but Ruby was furious. She stormed into the Shelby Depot where George Allen was in charge as the dispatcher, to give him a piece of her mind. He was impressed by Ruby, courted her, and married her in Great Falls in 1910.



During their courtship, Ruby would ride into Shelby from her homestead in the summer months on her Cayuse pony, Babe. There, on Friday nights, she played the piano for the weekly dance. They would dance all night. In the morning, she would step up on the little Indian pony and he would take her slowly and surely home, while she dozed in the saddle.




Ruby's parents (Julius and Elpha
[Whaley] Steele) and her sister, Pearl (Steele) Soderstrom, joined her on the high prairie in Toole County, Montana. Each of them took up a homestead.

In 1917, Ruby and George struck oil on their homestead. In 1918, two of their little boys died in the influenza epidemic and Ruby, herself, almost died, as well. She was too sick to attend the funerals of her little darlings. A year later, she lost a third son, who was stillborn. In 1944, her youngest son, Donald Allen, died in a plane crash while training for the war in Oregon.

Two of her six children survived to raise families of their own. We are ever grateful for the courage and steadfastness of our grand parents and great grandparents, who suffered mightily to make a future for us in the West. Ruby said about Montana, "Everything blew away......"


Pictures: Top - Grandmother's Flower Garden by Ruby Mae (Steele) Allen
Middle - Ruby at about age 5 in 1893, probably taken in Byron, MN
Bottom - Detail of the Flower Garden Quilt.

Happy Stitching!