This Lone Star quilt from the early 1940s belongs to Beulah Baldwin of Fairfield, Idaho. In a recent interview she shared stories of her life as a young teacher on the Camas Prairie--and displayed several gorgeous quilts made by members of her family. Beulah said the material in the Lone Star quilt is not color fast because during WWII good fabric was scarce, though not rationed.
The second quilt was designed and made by Beulah's mother, Mabel Bretz, in 1961. Quilts like this remind Beulah of the women in her family who made them from dressmaking scraps. Though Beulah lived through the Great Depression, she doesn't remember it as a difficult time for her family. As a child she thought her family was "the same as everybody else's." Looking back now, she remembers having a different dress to wear to school every day for two weeks straight. Other girls in her class might have had two dresses in all.
The Camas Courier will soon run my article on Beulah's days as a teacher at the Corral school. I also plan to write a story about Beulah for the Whistle Stop, the newsletter of the Camas County Historical Society. Watch this blog for more!
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