Place

Cramahe Township, Ontario, Canada

Date

1860 – 1876

DIMENSIONS in centimetres

216 x 200

Materials & techniques

Cotton; Pieced, quilted

Credit

Gift of Jo Anne Claus

ID

Textile Museum of Canada T2006.17.1

Mahala Clark was married to John Bennet Freeman on June 7, 1864 and had five children. She died in November 1876 at the age of 32. She stitched this quilt at her home in Cramahe Township in Ontario, either before or during her 12 years of marriage. After her death, the quilt was given to Mahala’s only daughter, Jennie Freeman Snelgrove, of Brighton, Ontario, who was just an infant when Mahala died. Jennie treasured this quilt because it was the only connection she had to her deceased mother. As she had no daughter of her own, she passed the quilt on to her great-niece, Jo Anne Perry (Claus) in 1950, when she was 11 or 12, who then generously donated the quilt to the Museum.
 
Mahala’s fine handwork lives on in this beautiful quilt, which combines patterns of stars with the Hole-in-the-Barn-Door pattern.