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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