Antique quilt exhibit opens at the Wilkinson

On Sunday afternoon the Wilkinson Homestead museum in Eastport will hold the opening for “An Indiana Quilt Adventure”—an exhibit of fourteen antique quilts from the Halfaker/Sparks collection owned by Marcia Graham.  I had a little sneak preview on Tuesday, and heard the story of how the quilts came to Michigan.  (This is an expanded version of a story that appeared first in the Elk Rapids News.)

Collector Marcia Graham and exhibit organizer Loraine Mottern surrounded by the quilts

Graham, a Birmingham resident, who has summered north of Elk Rapids for nearly 40 years, didn’t set out to be a collector. Then she found nine flannel-wrapped quilts in the attic of an Indiana farmhouse. The owner, Ed Halfaker, had died, and his possessions were being auctioned off. She bid on the quilts on impulse.  It saddened her to think no daughters or granddaughters remained to care for these expressions of a woman’s creativity.  

She thought the quilter must have been Crystal Halfaker, Ed’s mother. She asked around in Hendricks County, but people told her no one was still alive who would know the family. Well, maybe one old lady, they said, but Jennie was in her nineties and “not cognizant.” Graham, a geriatric nurse for 18 years, doesn’t make assumptions about the faculties of the elderly. She made an appointment to talk to Jennie and took the quilts with her.

“The quilts,” she says, “were the keys that unlocked Jennie’s memories.” No, Jennie told her, those weren’t Crystal’s quilts. Her sister-in-law, she sniffed, “didn’t know how to do a thing, let alone make quilts. My mother made those quilts, and from the time I was a little girl I helped her.”

Jennie Halfaker Sparks (left) and Luna Waters Halfaker

Jennie Louise Halfaker Sparks and her mother, Luna Alice Waters Halfaker, lived all their lives in Hendricks County, Indiana. When the chores were done, in the moments between farm work and sleep, they made quilts. Luna made the first one in 1890. Jennie started helping when she was a little girl, probably around 1916. When Luna died in 1950 Jennie and her brother John divided the quilts. Jennie took the five she liked best. Would Graham like to see those? She would indeed. Would she like to buy them? Oh yes.  One, a blue and white Snake in the Grass pattern, she considers Jennie’s masterpiece.

All the quilts in the collection were pieced by hand, assembled by hand, quilted by hand. “You even put the binding on by hand?” Graham asked Jennie. “We had nothing else to do,” said Jennie.

Luna and Jennie never showed their quilts to anyone. They worked alone. No neighbors came in for quilting bees. The mother and daughter would see an interesting pattern and go home and try to make it better. Their quilts are quirky, inventive—traditional patterns with a twist. Jennie didn’t like the dark colors of one, a striking variation on a kaleidoscope design. “Mother made me do this,” she told Graham.

Her own favorite was a bright pattern she called Flying Swallows. It looks like pinwheels of green and yellow and pink on a white ground. Graham says other quilters call the pattern Flying Geese.

There are mysteries. Why were the quilts rolled in flannel and stored away in trunks? Were they ever tucked in around a child? Unfurled across a marriage bed? Burrowed under on a winter night? They look as if they have never been used. They hold their secrets.

The quilts were displayed in public only once before, in 2003 at the Quilters Hall of Fame in Marion, Indiana. Now they are on view at the Wilkinson Homestead. The exhibit fills the tiny woodshed at the rear of the museum. The quilts cover every inch of wall and drape over a table, turning the space into a glowing tent. Some are too fragile to hang, and remain wrapped at the Wilkinson museum. During the exhibit volunteers will unroll them for inspection and put them away again.

The oldest quilt in the collection, made by Luna c. 1890

The Halfaker/Sparks Collection will be displayed at the Wilkinson Homestead museum on M-88 in Eastport every Sunday from noon-3:00 pm through September 6. Admission is free, and donations are accepted. Group tours may be arranged by appointment. For more information call Loraine Mottern at (231) 599-2546.