I just got done reading
No Time On My Hands, the biography of Grace Snyder, published in 1963. It's a story of a woman's life growing up, in first, alongside the Platte River of Nebraska, and then, the Sandhills of Nebraska.
North Platte, Bridgeport, Cozad, Broken Bow, those sorts of places.
In exactly, precisely, the same places I spent my own growing-up.
I dunno when Grace Snyder died; as she was pretty ancient in 1963 (and gotten married in 1903), I assume some time in the late 1960s, the latest the early 1970s.
It's a great book, and apparently still in print.
Speaking as a man, I liked the book because 99% of it is history, and less than 1% of it has to do with quilt-making.....although Grace Snyder was apparently acknowledged as the best quilt-maker in America during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.
I've of course seen hand-made quilts before, but not paid much attention to them.
Apparently some of the pieces she used were the size where it took
eight pieces to make something the size of a postage stamp? One of those things had more than 85,000 pieces. I had always been under the impression quilts were more big pieces of scrap cloth randomly stitched together.
And she did it by hand.
I can't find photographs or images of the quilts she made.
http://www.pbs.org/americaquilts/century/time/grace_snyder.htmlhttp://www.quiltershalloffame.net/index_files/Page847.html