Found! In 1930's Quilt Maker's Stash

Things make their way to me…old diaries, chocolate tins filled with emergency buttons and dusty spools of someone’s great aunt’s threads, miscellaneous scrap fabric stashes. Pieces of women’s lives from the past hundred years, little collections too random to keep, too intimate to throw away.

A box of the sort arrived a few weeks ago. I was expecting some loose quilt blocks from the 1930’s, pink gingham, tiny blue all-over rose prints, prints that I’ve come to expect from depression era quilt makers. What I wasn’t expecting was to lift away the gently rumpled blocks and find the bottom lid of an empty stationary box filled with loose papers offering clues enough to get to know the woman who’d saved them. First, you’ll want to know what was in the stationary lid.