Granny Irwin’s Christmas Quilt
The following story was told by John Rice Irwin:
Sarah Irwin, or “Granny Irwin,” was one of two girls in a family with 11 children. Her sister, who was much older, married and left home when Granny was young. Hence, she and her mother cooked, washed and sewed for her nine brothers and her father. They also did the milking, much of the gardening, and the canning and drying of all the food. Granny was a prodigious worker, and had little time to pursue her artistic endeavors. Therefore, it was surprising to find this purely aesthetic Christmas quilt which she had made.
Her son later commented, “I always thought it was the prettiest quilt I ever saw. But, the only time she ever used it was around Christmas time. She’d get it out a few days before Christmas and use it as a bed cover until around the first of the year; then, she’d put it away for another year. She made it, I think, about the time she was married in the late 1890s.”
An Appalachian Christmas, in Norris, Tennessee, at the Museum of Appalachia.
