Portland Magazine
February 14, 2020
By Anna Lageson-Kerns '83, '14
WHEN IT WAS MY TURN to receive one of my mother’s hand-sewn quilts, my mom and I flipped through pages of a book of traditional patterns: log cabin, double wedding ring, and the pattern that caught my eye, Grandmother’s Fan. As she began designing, she pulled her fabric scrap boxes from the closet. A child of the Great Depression, my mother saved everything. A scrap of dinner became the next day’s lunch, a scrap of paper served for a grocery list, and a scrap of material was organized with an artist’s eye for color, pattern, and texture.
She sorted through an array of blues ranging from soft powder to deep midnight, then followed the same procedure with her box of red, then yellow fabric scraps, until she’d settled on a color for each wedge in the fan. Each fan was then stitched to one of 30 squares of fabric, which were arranged and rearranged on our dining room table like puzzle pieces. My mother always deflected praise for her artistry. She said she was just following a pattern. Her natural humility was endearing but baffling to me when I witnessed her skill. I wonder how many hundred stitches went into making my quilt and how many thousand stitches created the quilts for my five siblings and for my mother’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren, until she lost her vision. Each quilt always included an embroidered note in her own handwriting— the most beautiful stitching of all.
My quilt is filled with memories of my childhood and of my mother’s care. Here was a piece of cloth from my favorite flannel nighty that stretched long enough for me to tuck my toes up in to ward off a chill. Here I saw the halter top I begged her to make so I could keep up with my stylish friends, here the bright curtains of my childhood bedroom, here a tailored, striped blouse to add polish to my emerging professional wardrobe. The pattern is Grandmother’s Fan, but the quilt itself—each hand-sewn stitch—is an affirmation of my mother’s love.
ANNA LAGESON-KERNS ’83, ’14 is University of Portland’s senior online communications and multimedia production manager. In October, her mother, Betty Lageson, died in her own home surrounded by her children. At her funeral, her beautiful quilts hung from the church balcony and the pews.
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