Baby Quilt

Baby Quilt - 1939

Florence Dykes was born in 1908, the daughter of Charles Elder and Elsie (Barker) Elder.  Charles and Elsie lived on the Barker family farm in northwestern Ohio with Elsie’ parents and continued to farm the land after the Barkers died.  They raised their three children on the farm with the help of Elsie’s unmarried sister, Ida, who lived with them.  Florence started quilting as a young woman.  Both her mother, Elsie, and her Aunt Ida were quilters and passed on their skills to Florence. 

Her sewing ability was valuable to Florence in her own home when she married George Dykes.  An expert needlewoman, she sewed, mended, embroidered, crocheted, and quilted items for her home and children.   She did her hand quilting in the daytime, when the light was best, using an oval hoop on a stand in her living room.  Mending tended to wait until evening when the light was poorer.

This baby quilt was made in 1939 for the birth of her daughter, Mary Ann.  Florence continued making quilts for most of her life, including for her grandchildren in the 1970s.  She died in 1986.

Mary Ann remembers asking her mother to teach her to hand quilt.  Teasing, Florence told Mary Ann that her stitches were too loose, remarking that she didn’t want to catch her toes in the quilt’s stitching.   Mary Ann moved to Wausau in 1977, bringing many of her mother’s quilts with her.

The Quilt

In this crib-sized quilt, embroidered blocks featuring a little girl playing with her teddy bear alternate with blocks of a tiny floral print fabric.  Each embroidered block has a different scene. The quilt fabrics are cotton, as is the batting, white backing fabric and binding.

The girl and teddy bear scenes were probably from commercial embroidery transfer patterns, which were readily available through women’s magazines and catalogs.  The embroidery is mostly done in outline stitch.  Some of the pink and blue threads have faded - originally the little girl would have been much more vivid against the white background.  Florence used tiny precise hand quilting stitches in all of her quilts; this is a fine example of her skill.