Coverlet made by Barsheba Thorpe Dyer

Coverlet made by Barsheba Thorpe Dyer

Excerpt From the History of John Robert Dyer and Barsheba Thorpe, written by Nancy Mildred Beals DeWitt

We know they raised sheep and cattle too, because we have what they called a coverlet that Grandma Dyer and her girls made. They raised the sheep and sheared them, washed the wool and corded and dyed it and spun it into yarn. They made the first layer of linen from flax. Flax is a plant they raised and they made thread out of the fiber of the flax plant and then wove it into linen. Then they wove the wool yarn onto it to keep them warm, like we use an afghan today. It took a lot of strange flax tools to work the flax and it takes a lot of hard work to make flax into linen and wool into yarn and we have a piece of their work. Isn't that wonderful? This piece of cloth is over 100 years old. The dyes are all natural, made from plants and roots. The deep blue is from indigo root, which was one of the staple crops of the old south.