Hankie Heritage
Did you know that American quilters are bitterly divided on the hot-button topic of vintage handkerchiefs? Me neither, until I went sleuthing on Pinterest last week for ideas on how to use the things. Whoa, Nellie, that is a cart-before-the-horse kind of inquiry. The foundational issue is whether to use them in the first place. For nearly every crafty blog post I found teaching how to use handkerchiefs in a quilt, scarf, or pillow cover, I read at least one anguished comment expressing concern for the shaky future of our grandmothers’ old hankies – especially the ones nobody cared enough about to use a single time. For many, vintage hankies are as sacrosanct as kittens. The revered textiles are to be preserved in their unaltered state.
I get it. After all, you may be holding onto a souvenir hankie with a map of Florida that was such a treasured heirloom, it was lovingly preserved for decades at the bottom of a stuck-shut dresser drawer, sort of like a Spanish galleon with its gold and emeralds, lying undisturbed for centuries on the ocean floor near Columbia. Or, your jewel could be a lovely floral number with a spray of yellow gladioli and scalloped kelly green edges. Perhaps the hankie had been neatly tucked away in the rusted zipper pocket of a seldom-used black patent leather handbag that someone’s Aunt Melba (though not your own) saved for special occasions, the last of which she attended in 1958. Or maybe the handkerchief you’ve stumbled onto provides telltale evidence of the misspent youth of some unfortunate Midwestern girl, locked up at home in bad lighting, perfecting her fine stitches, when she might have been out riding a bicycle or swimming or learning the Charleston.
Those hankies were too good to use then and they are still too good to use today. What kind of frothy trollop would dare to disregard the indisputable historical gravitas of such gems by incorporating them into a hinky little hankie conglomerate of a quilt, even one that might possibly be used and enjoyed? Far better to preserve the previously neglected hankies to be eaten by moths, silverfish, and carpet beetles. Save a vintage hankie and save a misunderstood insect in the process.
If the betterment of insect-life is not motivation enough, think of your own estate sale. Imagine yourself moldering in the ground just a row over from that detestable Uncle Clifford, the one who always leered at you in your grandmother’s kitchen when you were sent in to fetch the peach cobbler. To add insult to the eternal injury, you bang your head on the lid of your coffin when you realize you’ve left nothing better in your stash than a bunch of One-Block-Wonder quilt books and all that Alexander Henry fabric with pictures of Frida Kahlo’s unibrow. Chills, right?
What if, instead, until the day you die, you continue to hoard all those hankies you’ve inherited, collected, and forgotten? (Technically, is it still hoarding if you’ve forgotten you have it? Or would that make it advanced hoarding?) Take, for example, the hankie from Salt Lake City in the plastic envelope with the sticker that says: “Vintage! Pristine! $22.00.” Why, the estate-sale people could probably bring in a buck-fifty for that one alone. When the hipsters in tattoos pass through your sewing room, they won’t spend more than a few seconds holding up gizmos like your plastic yo-yo makers, laughing to one another, and asking “What’s up with this?” You want to give those young gals more.
The obvious solution is to leave the millennials our hankie heritage. Unused. Unwashed. And unattended to since the middle of the last century. Let them figure it out. Like the rest of our messes. Even if nobody ever wants all the hankies that were just too precious to cut into, think how pretty they’ll look brightening up a landfill.
