The Winners and Other Musings

Congratulations to Mary of Mary on Lake Pulaski who won the Hot Stuff bundle, and Nita of NitaDances won the boy fabric and the Power Tool button. I’ve had fun going around to people’s blogs and noticing what they are making and quilting and just plain old doing.  Some are bemoaning the long cold spring, others are finishing up other projects, some are buying fabric.

Like me.

I’m in love with that Italy fabric and plan to make a Schnibbles with it in Sherri and Sinta’s Another Year of Schnibbles.  The pattern they’ve chosen is Top Hat, and as soon as I finish up the prep for class today, I’m going to start cutting out my nine-patches.  If it’s not the Italy fabric then how about one or two of those others?  I’m saving the Lizzy House Constellations for another project, so it won’t be that fabric that gets rotary-bladed today.  This fine stack is from Fabricworm, who will give you a discount of 5 bucks on 50 dollars worth of fabric.  No problem!  There’s always one more piece I want to buy to get it up to that amount.

This past weekend I flew up to Utah to see my parents, and there is a fabulous quilt shop there: Gardiner’s.  I took my Dad in with me and in a few quick minutes, given how well they display everything, I had these cut, paid for and we were out the door.

I always enjoy visiting my parents, and Sunday afternoon we took a drive up Route 89, which winds all the way to Yellowstone, but we weren’t going that far.  We were headed to Brigham City, and as we passed through Willard, my mother mentioned that her great-grandmother was buried there.  At my request, we veered into this old pioneer cemetery, where we stopped and looked at her great-grandparents’ grave.

Most of this area was settled by immigrants like my great-great-grandparents: he was a tailor in Scotland, who, when he landed here in this sloping valley, became a farmer.  I was intrigued that he was a tailor first, given my love of sewing.  This Elizabeth Dickson, born in Needles, Scotland, was the mother of Elizabeth in my English Elizabeth quilt.

It’s interesting to hear these things at my age.  I’m sure I’ve heard all the stories more than once, but somehow they hit a touchstone now, and these grandparents are more real to me: a tailor, turned farmer, a Scotswoman who immigrated with her husband and gave birth to my great grandmother who I’m named for.  Next time I go up, I want to visit all the graves of my relatives, something my mother and father do every Memorial Day, so get ready, Mom and Dad.  It’s our next field trip.

Do we have a quilting heritage?  I think so.  I learned to sew from my mother, from my sixth-grade sewing class where I made a gingham apron, and quilting entered when I was pregnant with my first child and wanted a baby quilt.  I’ve lived through one solids phase, when it was the Amish quilts we hungered and thirsted after, stitching them up in bold modern shapes.  They are the mother to today’s Modern Quilts, I believe, but instead of black as the neutral, white or gray are preferred in this iteration.  I think many of us remember our first quilting experience, whether it be last year or decades ago.  While we don’t have markers of stone set in hillsides overlooking Willard Bay and the Great Salt Lake, we might have quilts tucked away in corners, or given to children and friends.  There is a rich lineage of quilting in our world, and I’m happy to be a part of it.

I think the associations we form amongst ourselves as quilters, are every bit as valuable as those folds of fabric sitting in our cupboards and closets, the pieced quilts hanging on walls and draped over beds. Thanks again to all those who visited the blog this past week, who leave comments of support and who are (or who became) followers.

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