HOW MY QUILTING JOURNEY STARTED ❤️

As a little girl, I grew up surrounded by quilts that were made for us by my grandmother.  They kept me toasty warm in the winter and yet nice and cool in the summer.  The secret to that magic was in all those loving stitches and, I suspect, the breathable cotton flannel layered inside.  A quilt is a work of art and a labor of love and if you're lucky enough to possess an old scrap quilt it's also a remarkable piece of history stitched together by thread.

One of my most treasured memories as a young girl is sitting at my grandma’s kitchen table surrounded by all sorts of colorful scraps of fabrics while she and my mom and my aunts decided which fabrics looked best when placed next to one another.  The end result was always a gorgeous array of fabrics stitched into a quilt that told a story, a story that I could tell myself when I was snuggled beneath the quilt looking at each and every patch. There would be material from my grandma’s kitchen curtains, her aprons, her Sunday dress, the short set she made me one summer and countless pieces of our lives all stitched together in beautiful colors and patterns. To this day I can still remember where all those scraps of fabric came from and still feel all the love stitched into those quilts.

A photo of my grandma's quilt square on 
a mousepad.

The first quilt that my grandmother gave me I used on my bed until I was married and by that time it was in tatters and I’m talking serious tatters, long strips that would wrap around me as I tossed and turned in my sleep.  I just wasn’t willing to pack it away because, much like a worn childhood teddy bear, I cherished it. Then one morning my husband woke up to find the quilt wrapped around my neck and he put his foot down and I had to tuck my quilt away. I still have it, tatters and all. My grandmother has long since passed away, yet the memory of her remains in each of the quilts that she made for us, her love still firmly stitched into each and every one.  

My armoire filled with my grandmother's
quilts and a few of my own.

When I got married, my husband brought with him an heirloom quilt that had been passed down through his family and was quite striking in its beauty.  Our living room had twenty foot cathedral ceilings so I decided to hand this huge heirloom quilt as a work of art on the wall.  Through its many years of use, however, the batting in this vintage quilt had stretched completely out of shape so that one corner hung much longer than the other.  In order to hang it on the wall I had to stand on a tall ladder and patiently hammer in hundreds of stick pins to gently lift the one side up so that it would hang straight across the bottom.  Over the years as we would repaint I would have to take that quilt down and then painstakingly pin it all back up into place again.  It hung there for thirty years so you can imagine the damage the sun did to it since it was hanging next to a wall of glass.  And, yes, I know you're not supposed to treat heirloom quilts that way, instead you should do your best to preserve and protect them, but for thirty years we enjoyed that work of beauty on our wall before moving away and taking it down for good.  I think it was well worth it!

A photo of my husband's heirloom quilt on a mug.  

When I was pregnant with my son, I purchased a quilt from a lady who owned a quilt shop in Miami Beach.  I wanted to hang it on the wall over his crib in the nursery.  She was in the process of teaching this quilt as a class at her shop and so she only had the pieced top finished. She called it "The Sleeping Bear Quilt". She took it with her wherever she went in order to work on the hand quilting so that it would be done in time for my son's birth.  My son had his own plans, however, and arrived four months early.  He weighted only one pound, ten ounces. He spent the next four months in the NICU and when he came home his quilt was up on the wall waiting for him❣️

"The Sleeping Bear" quilt made for my son.

When my son was in pre-school I received my very first catalog in the mail from Keepsake Quilting and I absolutely fell in love.  I must have thumbed through those pages hundreds of times.  It brought back so many loving memories of watching my grandma make her quilts that I was filled with a desire to learn how to quilt myself so that I could make a quilt of my very own.  I ordered a “how to quilt” book and a quilt kit that included a “Lotus Blossom” pattern and all the material to make it. Then every day as I sat in the car line at my son’s school I would stitch together all the pieces by hand. Then I quilted it by hand.  It took me over a year to finish it.  That was my first quilt and I was very proud of it.  I made a few more quilts by hand but then life just sort of got in the way and I never quilted again until recently.

My first quilt made entirely by hand.

I hope some day that my family will cherish my quilts as much as I love and cherish my grandmother's.  Sometimes I think that sewing has become a lost art.  It's no longer a requirement to learn how to cook and sew in school and our favorite hobbies these days usually involve technology and anything with immediate gratification.  Parents don't always stop to teach their children the joy that comes as a reward from patiently working on a craft.  I know my world moves so much faster than my grandmother's did.  And my son's world will move even faster than mine.  Yet if you look at my grandmother's world she was up from sunrise to sunset working hard; baking bread, cooking meals from scratch, canning fruits and vegetables from her own garden, washing clothes through a wringer machine and then hanging them on the line to dry; yet she found the time to put something of beauty and craftsmanship into her world with her quilts.   But we, with all of our technological advances that should give us more time in our day to get things done, still end up with no time left in our day to do the things we love.  How does that happen? I think we should take a lesson from my grandmother's generation and remember to always find the time for activities and crafts that put beauty and love into our lives.  

I challenge you to pick up a needle and thread and stitch some love into your world❣️