Stitched Together
Chuck Kleeberg has graciously donated a selection of antique quilts, many of them hand stitched, to auction in support of the Bryant Neighborhood Center. Chuck is a committed volunteer at the Center, tutoring in the Trinity Afterschool Program. Read on to hear where he found his life long passion for quilt collecting. To view the quilts, visit 32auctions.com/BNCQuilts and bid May 24-27th, 2021!
I have three brothers.
There is a twelve-year difference between the oldest and the youngest.
As each of us was born, my mom would sketch 32 pictures of common things we would soon encounter in life on white squares of cloth. The subjects she chose were random. Chicken, bell, pear, umbrella, moon, ball, bus, airplane, cat, etc.
My grandmother would then embroider each of the pictures by hand and create a square for our name and birth year. She pieced all these squares with plain blue cotton squares in checkerboard fashion and then laid a blue sheet of fabric across the back. With her sewing machine she tied all this together to create a quilt.
Thus, my first quilt was an embroidered square patch. While I treasured it, I didn’t lock it up for safekeeping. I used it.
It kept me warm at night. It helped me learn language. I made up stories with the pictures. Over a card table it was the wall of a fort. It was the central decoration of my room and it was hung over the window to darken my room when I had measles. It was both my cape when I became a superhero and my solace when I felt the rest of the world was against me.
It was mine. It was not a hand me down. No other brother could claim it.
It was my connection to my ancestors. I knew who created it. I later learned of a long maternal history of creating useful articles with needle and thread. I tried my own hand at this craft and soon learned to appreciate how much work went into each object.
Last summer, I found it packed away in storage. I took a photo of it and sent it to my three brothers. I asked if they still had theirs. Within minutes, they each sent me pictures of their quilts. Imagine that! After 70-80 years, our quilts were still with us, close at hand. They were all the same and yet all very different.
Quilts are time capsules.
They reflect what the quilter was thinking about. By materials, craftsmanship, subjects and designs they reflect the era in which they were made. Each quilt captures a moment in time as unique as that moment is.
As I grew older, I could not pass up adopting as many forsaken quilts as I could. Not only had each one probably given to their owners all those things as I had experienced, but no handmade quilt was ever created with malice. They are all expressions of love.
Storage is not a good place for them. I need to find good homes for these adoptees.
These quilts are not all museum quality pieces. They did not spend their lives in a hope chest. You might find a stain or a missed stitch. You might even find errors, some of which might be intentional. Some quilters believed any attempt at human perfection was an affront to the Almighty, so they stuck in a mistake.
But even if you don’t share my passion for these quilts, know that every dollar you spend at this auction will go toward the life-changing programs at the Bryant Neighborhood Center. It might mean a meal to someone who is hungry. Or a prescription to someone who is sick. It might help a struggling child learn to read. It might mean clean clothes and a fresh start to someone who needs that.