“To make the most beautiful quilts in the world, to marry a cowboy and to look down on the top of a cloud.” These were the dreams of Grace Snyder, as told by her biographer, her daughter, Nellie Snyder Yost, in their book No Time On My Hands, 1963. All three dreams were fulfilled: she made many award winning quilts; she married Bert Snyder, a rancher, in 1903; and she flew in an airplane to New York City in 1950 for the Twenty-seventh International Women’s Exhibition and to Springfield, Massachusetts, for the Eastern States Exposition at Storrowton with her quilts.
Her first quilt, a four-patch, was made in the great out-of-doors of Nebraska while she was herding family cattle. Others were made while she was teaching school prior to her marriage. Those made after her marriage might have been made in a car, while following her husband as he worked on their ranch.
Her well-known “Flower Basket Petit Point” quilt, adapted from a luncheon plate; the “Bird of Paradise,” from a dish design; and “Tiger Lily,” from flowers in her garden, were published in the Kansas City Star. Her quilts were shown in a one-woman exhibit in Nebraska and later at the Houston Quilt Festival in 1978. “Flower Basket Petit Point” was included in the exhbit and publication of The 20th Century’s 100 Best American Quilts.
Grace Snyder
(1882-1982)
Award winning quilter, coauthor of No Time on My Hands. Inducted in 1980 at the Continental Quilting Congress, Arlington, Virginia.
Research Associate: Carol Bosshardt