Remembering Ruby

A Few Years back..........our quilt club showed three of my grandmother's quilts at our annual Antique Quilts Show during Deutschesfest, our fall festival.

Fronen Steppdecker is the name and theme of our quilt guild. The title, in German, describes how we all feel about quilting, I think. Can you translate it and tell me if you feel the same way about quilting?

My grandmother, Ruby, loved to quilt and was a "complete" hand quilter. Each of the three quilts I'm showing here was made by hand from start to finish.

This Dresden Plate, the most distressed of the three, was made during the late 1950's from scraps saved from Ruby's aprons. Ruby had only three dresses; but about 25 aprons! She never wore slacks. Never. She was born in Minnesota, Olmsted County, in 1889. She died in Spokane, WA, in 1989. She was an active homemaker until her mid 90's.

A lot of quilts have been sewn on machines like this classic Singer. Ruby had a White treadle machine to which my mother had helped attach an electric motor. Ruby, who never drove an automobile, either, would have nothing to do with it. "Too fast", she said, "and it doesn't sew straight."

Consequently, every piece was cut by hand and stitched by hand and quilted by hand. She collected the print scraps from the aprons and matched them with solid pieces of fabric she bought at the local "5 and 10 cent store" (probably Woolworth's - anyone remember Woolworth's?)

Ruby was an artist, truly, as were so many women of her generation.

You see, here, her stitches haven't given up, but the fabrics have.

She would lay the appliqued blocks out on her bed and fuss with them until she had them arranged the way she liked. Mother, often, was called in to help shift things because, we all know how back-breaking it is working over a bed, arranging the blocks! I witnessed the scene several times as a youngster.

Ruby loved a scalloped border and I marveled, way back then at this one, which always reminded me of a circus tent, somehow. Very cheerful and banner-like.

Well, she loved color, too. Don't we all? Isn't a trip to the quilt shop really about filling our eyes, hearts and heads with color to take us through some of the drabber phases of our lives?

This was Ruby's version of Grandmother's Flower Garden. My daughter and I repaired this quilt before the show. We are currently working on repairing the Dresden Plate and will show you our progress on that one as we go along.

This quilt was made during the 1960's. That's certainly a 60's color, that lime green, isn't it?

Ruby made this quilt for my mother, who loved the color, turquoise. Can you see where we repaired this part of the quilt?

Such vibrant colors for a woman born in the Victorian age.

We didn't repair this block then and haven't, yet. There's something kind of authentic about the wear the quilt is showing. I remember this quilt in my mother's room as I was growing up.

More wear and tear and a mark of some sort. We don't launder these lovelies, anymore. Just spot clean, air them and store them in pillow cases in a closet.

Yum.

I haven't any close ups of this one, The Double Wedding Ring. Always, the scalloped edge. This quilt pattern is so wonderful. No wonder it was so popular through the years. Tell me about your heirlooms, please, when you have a minute to stop and share with us.

Remembering Ruby........love you, Gammy!

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!