Usually about this time of year I try to do some sewing or quilting since its too cold to be outside. This year I thought I would start by seeing what I had for fabric scraps in my totes.  As I was going through them I came across some of the quilt blocks I had gotten when Anna Margaret passed away.  I love looking through this stuff and I started laying out the quilt blocks on the bed upstairs.  I found 30 quilt blocks that were of the same design and I was looking at them trying to decide what would be the best way to put them together; to make them look like Anna Margaret thought they should look.  I’m still pondering that.

For Christmas Jillian got me a book called “The Farmer’s Wife, Sampler Quilt”.  This books talks about a sampler quilt where each quilt block was made by a different farmer’s wife. In 1922 the magazine called the Farmer’s Wife ran a contest that offered prizes for the best answer to the following question: “If you had a daughter of marriageable age, would you, in the light of your own experience, want her to marry a farmer?” In this book they published the top 68 responses and associated a quilt block with each letter.

To bring these two things together, one day after I was studying the quilt blocks upstairs I sat down to read some more letters from the Quilt book and the first page I opened to was the quilt block pattern exactly like the ones AM did. This is called Churn Dash.

I thought this was signal that I should share the letter from the book that is associated with this quilt pattern.

“I lived the first twenty-one years of my life in a large city. The past twenty years have been spent on a large farm and my experiences have been such that I can truthfully say I would have my daughter marry a farmer.

While the city affords many forms of diversion, I have learned that true happiness is best found in doing real God-service. This the farm woman finds in raising fowls, making butter, curing meat, planting (a) garden, canning, drying and preserving. I find real joy in doing these worthwhile things that need to be done because the world needs the fruits of my labors. No joy born of city pleasures exceeds the joy I feel when my product flaunt the blue ribbon at the state fairs.

As a city woman I ran the gamut of formal teas and parties; as a farmer’s wife I have done something of everything a farmer’s wife has to do, and much that requires a man’s strength.

An unbelievable metamorphosis has been wrought in my ideas and ways of living and I would not have it otherwise. There is something so good, solid and genuine about farm life, and so much of sham, veneer and hypocrisy about city life. Country life  is a great developer of character, the farm woman accomplishes so many worthwhile, purposeful things and never ceases to grow in mind, character and soul.

I believe that a prerequisite of a woman’s content, success and happiness on the farm is a broad education – college if possible. My education has been my chief asset on the farm. I began farm life by making a study of scientific farming, reading many agricultural magazines and government bulletins; the practical application of the knowledge gained brought me success and comforts and the enviable position of being somewhat of an authority upon farm-home matters, strange as this may seem.”

 

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