Pieced mat made of red and blue silk brocade: center and corners red, four side strips blue; both similar floral patterns in diaper patterns. Lined with coarse printed cotton. Bound with pink cotton folded to back 1-1/2" and whipped to lining.
Pieced Quilt. Cotton fabrics; solids (mainly pink) and prints. Twelve 14" x 14" pieced blocks, "Bowtie Variation" set in a pink sashing. Printed cotton lining. Cotton filling. Binding: lining turned to front and hand stitched. Quilted, 5-6 stitches/inch. Made by Mandy Lula Madison Ary.
Unfinished pieced quilt top. Hand sewn, pieced pattern - "Tea Leaves" (?). No lining, filling, quilting or binding. Made by Lena Given Roop Dees in the 1930s.
A two-sided pieced and tied bedcover made by Katarzyna Marysia Pietrasz Killian (1897- 1982) in Taunton, Massachusetts in the 1960s from scrap fabrics 9-patch style, made of a variety of 1950s and 1960s printed cottons. No batting. The two layers of pieced cotton fabrics were set back to back and the edges bound with commercial binding. The binding is frayed all along the edges. One side of the quilt uses a predominant "tile" print fabric in taupe, blue, brown and white. The other side has no single predominant design. Born in Poland in 1897, Katarzyna Pietrasz came to the United States in 1913. She settled in Taunton, Massachusetts, working as a weaver in Taunton’s textile mills. She and her husband raised three sons, struggling to make ends meet during the Great Depression. Her grandson, who donated this quilt, recalled that Katarzyna delighted in “creative thrift,” and continued to make scrap "blankets", as the family called them, until just a few years before her death in 1982. Her grandson also recalled that Katarzyna's blankets accompanied family members to college, to the beach, and into married life. This example of her work exhibits the wear consistent with its history of use in the family, as well as many mends, both hand and machine stitched, that testify to its history of thrift and family affection.
