The Hand of the Maker is Always Present

Hand Made Quilts constructed by Atha Brinker,

Maternal Grandmother of Kerry and Michael Fitzgibbons.

These two quilts were hand stitched by Atha while living in Wyoming in the mid 1930’s.

The quilts are made from remnants of materials used in sewing shirts, dresses and dish towels. Atha also crocheted tablecloths, doilies, kitchen wash clothes and long washable cotton bandages for leppers in a colony in Africa.

The Wedding Ring quilt made in the mid-1930s was a gift to Dawn and Kerry Fitzgibbons following their wedding in 1967. The second quilt, the Log Cabin design, was probably made in the made earlier but was little used. Atha made many quilts but stopped in the early 1950s because you could see her stitches; they were no longer fine enough to be hidden. The making of quilts was not a hobby. They were necessary home furnishings for the comfort of the family.

Atha was born in 1890 in Goodland Kansas. At age 16 and Upon high school graduation became a teacher in a one room schoolhouse that encompassed all grades.

She married Bert E. Brinker June 22, 1910. Once she was married she could no longer teach school, female teachers were not allowed to be married. She and Bert decided during the depression and the ‘dust bowl of the central plains’ during the 1920s to move to Oregon to find work. During a stopover in Wyoming they met a man who told them about homesteads that were available near town and that the railroad was hiring able bodied men to work in the roundhouse repair shop. Not wanting to waste gas, they walked ten miles out of town to see the homestead sites and back again to file a claim (the land was free). She and Bert and my mother (born in 1912) started their home in Wyoming living in a homestead tarpaper house on the Prairie. Atha homeschooled my mother (an only child) until she was entered the Ivinson Hall Episcopal Girls High School in Laramie. The family moved into Laramie and Atha was hired as the Matron at the Ivinson Home for Indigent Women and Bert was employed as the maintenance man for the Home. Later she operated a rooming house for college women. During World War Two she worked in the Remington Arms factory. After the war She and Bert moved to Fort Collins Colorado where she worked at Colorado State University as reference librarian and Bert was employed by the University, the maintenance department. She died in 1984 at the age of 94 and while most of her adult life she maintained waist length hair worn in a tight bun, she had little grey hair and she would never consider dying it.

Kerry Fitzgibbons