May at Krisp Quilt is responsible for this post. She has challenged us blogging quilters to tell her about how we started quilting and why we keep doing it. There's a giveaway at stake, too. May promises a prize to the person whose name is drawn from those who leave a comment on her blog or a link to her own blog with the answers to these questions. So go on over to Krisp Quilt and leave a note for May about why you quilt.
I'm not sure I know exactly why I started quilting or why I continue. But here are some thoughts. My mama quilted. Some of my childhood memories involve quilts. To help explain, I'm lifting an excerpt from the first quilting book I wrote, Quick Quilts (Oxmoor House, 1991).
It is July--a hot, barefoot July. Across the road from our house, wild primroses litter a bank with their party colors. Their heady scent hitches a ride on the transient summer air, riding as far as our long, shady front porch where Mama's quilting frame is set up. At the frame sit Mama and an elderly lady named Mrs. Patmon, a friend who often serves as our baby-sitter, my sister's and mine. Leisurely, but nimbly, their fingers work, taking dozens of stitches a minute through layers of calico print, cotton batting, and muslin backing.
Underneath the frame (four long beams supported by ladder-back chairs) my sister and I play out our childhood fantasies. We are cowboys, hiding here behind a mesquite bush from a war party of Cheyenne Indians. I am Tarzan and she is Jane, and this is our tree house, high above the African jungle. I am Cinderella and she is my fairy godmother, come to rescue me from the wicked stepsisters chattering above us. She will send me to the ball in a watermelon coach pulled by a team of barn cats and yard dogs.
The quilt., a scrap-bag profusion called Double Wedding Ring, will be finished before July has gone. It will adorn one of the beds in our house and warm us throughout the winter, now impossibly far away in the midsummer minds of childhood.
And for all the years to come, our memories of times shared in our playhouse world under Mama's quilting frame will come to us when bidden, to warm and comfort weary adult spirits.
I can't imagine a life without quilts. Like a life without books, that kind of life sounds pretty dreary to me. Quilts and quilting are part of the comforts of my life. The fact that this skill came to me by way of my Mama makes it even more valuable, more comforting. Thank you, Mama, for the legacy of bright fabrics, needle and thread, and patterns that inspire us and let us play.
Note: I no longer have the first quilt I made (or the second). The above photo shows some of my earliest efforts.
This post was migrated from the old blog. To see the comments on the original post, CLICK HERE. To add a new comment, click "Post a Comment", below.
On 01/28/2008, May Kristin said ...
Hi Susan! Thank you for sharing this! I do in some way envy you americans for your early memories of quilts and quiltmaking! I didn't know much about this art until I got started myself in the 80th'ies. But I've learned that we have old quilts in Norway to!
Take care!
Ps. I'll put you in both my drawings!
On 01/29/2008, Gayle said ...
I enjoyed this post so much...such a pleasure to read. :-)Gayle
On 01/29/2008, Deb said ...
Thanks, Susan, for the link. I intend to post a picture of my first quilt tomorrow and enter May's contest. :)
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