Grandmother's Choice Quilt

Well, I'm pretty excited about a new Block of the Week quilt that is starting up today.  The Grandmother's Choice Quilt is a memorial quilt celebrating women's suffrage.

The centennial anniversary of American women winning the right to vote will come in 2020; but the struggle took so long, that the quilt along is starting the quilt early in order to remember the fight for this important privilege.  When I consider that my own grandmothers did not have the right to vote, it brings the importance of the victory into sharper focus.  Here is my grandmother, Bertha Maust, in her wedding picture:

She was my mother's mother, and she was an extraordinary quilter.  Several of her quilts are in the collection of the Latimer Quilt and Textile Museum in Tillamook, Oregon.  She died nearly 40 years ago, and I often wish I had known her better.  

She was born Bertha Wise on October 8, 1892 in Yale, Iowa.  She was the daughter of Lile Wise and Ida Esabelle Slaybaugh.  She married my grandfather on November 17, 1912, (almost 100 years ago!) in Wenatchee Washington.  They had four children:  Clair Albin, who died 18 days after he was born.  Then Willard, Clarice (my mother), and Leland.  All of that to tell you that on the day this picture was taken--the day she married my grandfather--and even after bearing four children, she still did not have the right to vote.  It's incredible to think about.  

She was a very conservative and devout woman, but from what I know of her, she was something of a feminist too.  She was the valedictorian of her high school class, but she did not have the opportunity to attend college.  When my mother wanted to attend nursing school, my grandfather forbid it, saying that she would just go off and find a husband.  My grandmother talked him into allowing it.  (Interestingly, my mother did meet my father when she was a student nurse, and my father was one of her patients.)

Even if you decide not to participate in the quilt along, the blog has some interesting historical information about women's suffrage.  It's definitely worth a look and perhaps you will want to follow along.  I'll start out behind since we've traveling during the month of September, but I can't let this quilt pass me by.  I'll have to catch up on the blocks when I return home.  This will make a great October NewFO for me!