1898 Lura Watkin's Pieced Quilt

Lura B. Thomas made this quilt for her 10-year-old granddaughter, Lura Woodside, in 1898. It was part of the contents, donated in 1953, of Lura Woodside’s late 19th-century child’s bedroom in Malden, Mass. Furnishings, children’s clothing and playthings were among the items donated. Like the quilt, most of the clothes and doll dresses were also made by Lura Thomas, who had been a professional dressmaker.

Lura Thomas pieced this quilt of triangles utilizing many different roller-printed and woven checked, plaid, and striped cotton fabrics. Two 2 1/2-inch triangles are joined into a square, and the squares are joined so that the triangles of the same print form a diagonal row. In the center of the quilt “Lura 98” is embroidered in yellow. The quilt has a cotton lining and filling. It is quilted in a chevron pattern at 7 stitches per inch.

The donor, Lura Woodside, was born in East Boston in 1887, and grew up in Malden, Mass. She married Charles Watkins in 1910. An antiques collector and authority on New England ceramics and glass, she published several books and scholarly articles. She was a founder of the Middleton (Massachusetts) Historical Society, and the Lura Woodside Watkins Historical Museum was named in her honor. She died in 1982. Her quilt, made by her grandmother, represents her lifelong interest in history and the sharing of that interest through her many museum donations.

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