Chapter Two Hundred Fourteen

Quilt making has been one of the highlights in the world of Hitty lately and I was questioning Esther why she had not gotten involved.   We Robertson Hittys have been seeing many pretty ones on the Hittygirls site and were curious about them.  She explained that she enjoys many crafts but the sewing of quilts was just not her thing.   When she was a young girl her mother and grandmother always had a quilt in some stage and as she puts it, she grew up under a quilting frame!  

Grandma Alice has been paying attention to the quilt making and remarked that there must be some quilts in the Twin Manor miniature house.   A house of that era surely would have had several.   Esther agreed to take her to see them.   She explained that the quilts were researched designs used at the time but since fabric could not be reduced to 1/12th scale and sewing such tiny pieces almost impossible, she had painted them.  Yes indeed, they were painted using fabric paint and a toothpick!

While we were in Twin Manor, Grandma wanted to look at other things.   She particularly likes handwork so we took her to the master bedroom where she admired the lovely knit afghan on the foot of the bed.   It was knit with silk thread and so very light in weight.   A lady whose last name was Bell made it and she signed all her work with a tiny brass bell sewed somewhere in each piece.

One of our stops was the card table in the drawing room with the needlepoint top.  Esther finds it hard to believe that 30 years ago she and her son had made two of them and each had 33,000 stitches!

There are many pieces of needlepoint in the house such as chairs with bargello seats, rugs, samplers, pillows etc and one such piece interested Grandma.   It was the bargello needlepoint day bed in the sitting room. She also marveled at the tiny  ball of yarn and the knitting needles.

As we were leaving, Grandma stopped in the kitchen and was ever so thankful that we have come a long way in the design and convenience of kitchens!

When we got back to our rooms Esther remembered there had been another quilt in the child's room but it had been replaced with a woven spread.  She had kept the quilt and brought it out to show us.  We were now satisfied to know that Esther had made quilts, just used a different method than all the ones we have been reading about.

For our readers who want to know more about Twin Manor there are two sources you might want to visit.   The chapter when HittyBelle and I visited is:

http://users.zoominternet.net/~rbtson/chap29.htm

Pictures with historic references:

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