Quilter: Betty Rogers Duckett
Quilt Name: “Odd Fellow”
Quilt Created: 1989
On Loan by: Eva Duckett
It was called an Odd Fellow because each piece has a different print. It was also known as a “Beggar’s Quilt”, perhaps because in order to gather enough uniquely patterned fabric the quilter had to “beg” and trade with friends for their leftover fabrics and old clothing.
Mother learned to quilt when she was a young girl, but she really caught the quilting bug in the 80’s when classes were held at the Big Sandy Mush Community Center. From that point on she made many quilts for her home, her children and grandchildren, and also dozens of “Linus” quilts for children in hospitals. She made pieced quilts, and also wool quilts later using the wool from Daddy’s sheep. (Her wool quilts were generally solid material and not pieced.)
She must have saved every scrap that might eventually be used in a quilt. It was fun to look at the finished quilts with her and try to identify what the pieces were originally used for. In this Odd Fellow there are scraps from clothes Mother made for herself, my sister and me, and also scraps from clothing I made after she taught me to sew. One I can definitely identify as scraps of the first garment I ever made, so at the time she made this quilt she had been holding on to that particular scrap for 20 years! Some pieces she pointed out as “sack cloth” (from printed feed and flour sacks) were much older, possibly more than 40 years old. ~Eva Duckett