With red and white being the colors of the Polish flag, choosing my colors was easy. Next I called my two youngest aunts and asked for help in deciding what each person should be doing on the quilt. Working mostly from the Aunt Martha patterns from the 1950's, I designed nine of the blocks. I used the Little Fisherman for one and changed him into a marching soldier for another. My grandmother sitting in a rocker quilting with my grandfather's picture on the wall beside her was my own creation. Thus the quilt consisted of 12 blocks depicting my grandparents on the one with their 11 children each occupying a block. At this time all have passed on except my youngest aunt who turned 89 in 2008. This quilt was featured on the cover of QUILT WORLD magazine, December 1980, with instructions on how to square the chain inside, but in the following years many quilters have written me asking for the applique patterns. These old quilting magazines shall live forever at flea markets and yard sales where quilters keep finding and sharing them.
About the family: Jon Suchocki came to America with neighbors at the age of 14 in 1885. He worked in the coal mines and later the coke ovens of Southwestern PA earning the money to send back to Poland to pay for his four sisters to follow him. His parents remained in Poland and never knew their American descendants. Five years later his wife, Agneska Rogalinski, came to America with her parents at the age of 13. They met and married at the first Polish Catholic church in the Greensburg diocese. Their entire American lives were spent in Fayette County, PA and they are buried there in Saint Josef's Cemetery in Everson Valley. Their children: Peter, Cecelia, Olympia, Walter, Catherine, Berneise, Joseph Francis, Raymond Michael, Alexander John, Mary Elizabeth and Theresa Marie. Dad died in 1983 at the age of 73, and I inherited this quilt which he loved to show off to all his visitors.
Below is a photo of my father, Raymond Michael Thomas Suchocki, at age 27 shortly before I was born.