Summary

Alternative Name(s): Oven Mitt, Crazy Patchwork

Square pot holder with abstract or crazy patchwork design on front and diagonal quilting on reverse.

The pot holder was probably made by the paternal grandmother of the donor, Gwendoline Edith (Thompson) Adams. She was a very frugal and resourceful homemaker with an artistic bent. Her sister was Joyce (Thompson) Thomas, an artist who graduated from the National Gallery Art School and made her career in textile design, so fabric was very readily available for handcrafts at home. The donor's childhood memories are 'filled with bags of projects' such as this at various stages of completion, abandoned 'well before I was around because Grandma suffered from Parkinson's disease and her shaking hands stopped her from being able to do much of it.'

The pot holder was part of 'quite an accumulation of stuff...typical of the bits and pieces around my grandparents' farm house', passed to their son and taken care of by his wife, the donor's mother. The family had settled in the Wangoom and Warrnambool areas as farmers and merchants in late 1840s.They were comfortably affluent, staunch Presbyterians and would certainly have considered themselves to be 'upstanding citizens' during the late 1800s. They had a clothing store in Warrnambool, two dairy farms in Wangoom and a home in one of the prestigious streets in Warrnambool - not a large one, but with knobs in every room that rang differently pitched bells in the kitchen for the attention of staff.

There is a slight possibility that the pot holder was instead made by Ethel Adams, a sister of the donor's grandfather Murray Glasgow Adams, who died before World War I. She was apparently very artistic but because of her health was pretty much confined to home. Her two sisters, born in 1900 and 1903, became fiercely independent women, with the older, Vera, purchasing land and developing it during the Depression and the younger, Nellie, becoming a pharmacist and business woman, and purchasing a pharmacy in Minyip. She remained a spinster and subsequently returned home to 'look after Mother and Father as they aged' and remained in the family home until almost the end of her life (94 years old).

The donor notes that 'crazy quilting' was very popular during late 1800s, and continued as a practical craft long after that in rural and farming areas.

Physical Description

Square pot holder with striped braided cord loop in red, cream and brown on top left corner. The front of the holder is decorated with irregular angular applique patches of blue and red velour, yellow, light brown and green fabric, held in place by cross-stitch. The reverse of the pot holder is covered in a deep red plain fabric with diagonal machine stitched lines forming a quilted surface. There is a square piece of the same red fabric semi-attached to the top right of the reverse side, which flaps open where the diagonal stitching has degraded.

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