I Sewed Through Fabric My Great-Grandmother Chose Before World War I
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 1 June 2026
⏱️ 8 minutes
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Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, Joy Neal Kidney shares the story of a handmade quilt that linked her to her great-grandmother, Laura Goff, a country schoolteacher born shortly after the American Civil War who raised 11 children while moving across the Midwest in search of opportunity and education for her family.
Years after Laura’s death, Joy inherited her unfinished “Periwinkle” quilt — a beautiful but stubborn patchwork that would not lie flat. Taking it apart thread by thread and sewing it back together by hand, Joy found herself stitching through fabrics her great-grandmother had chosen decades earlier. It became more than a quilt. It became a story about family, women’s work, memory, sacrifice, and the quiet ways history survives across generations.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed human. |
| 0:19.0 | This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show, including your stories. |
| 0:26.6 | Send them to OurAmerican Stories.com. |
| 0:30.0 | They're some of our favorites. |
| 0:31.2 | Speaking of which, up next a story from one of our regular contributors, Joy Neal Kidney, and she listens at a W.H.O. in Des Moines, |
| 0:41.2 | a powerhouse station, one of the great stations in this country. And today, Joy brings us the story |
| 0:47.2 | of her great-grandmother's Periwinkle quilt. Here's Joy with the story. |
| 0:57.3 | I didn't know about the quilt top until several years after Laura Goff had died. |
| 1:03.4 | But my great-grandmother and I, the first and last of our family strand of oldest daughters, |
| 1:10.3 | ended up sewing by hand on this same quilt. |
| 1:17.6 | Born shortly after the Civil War, |
| 1:20.2 | in a Guthrie County log cabin west of Monteith, |
| 1:24.3 | Laura Jordan was already a fourth generation, Iowan, |
| 1:30.3 | but the first born in the state. When she grew up and became a country school teacher, Laura bought a gold watch so she could ring the school bell to call the children to class on time. |
| 1:39.3 | Back in 1890, when Laura married Milton Sheridan, Sherrodhoff. |
| 1:46.1 | She had to retire from teaching. |
| 1:48.5 | She no longer needed that gold watch, |
| 1:51.2 | so she traded it to her father for something she needed more. |
| 1:55.0 | A cow. |
| 1:56.9 | Laura bore 11 children in 21 years. |
| 2:06.6 | While Sherd moved his family at least 13 times, out of state twice, seeking greener pastures, Laura agreed to move anywhere in the United States, |
... |
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