My love for quilts and quilting comes from both sides of my family, but especially my paternal grandmother. She not only quilted, but crocheted, knitted, and crafted. My maternal grandmother quilted a little but in her later years with not much success. My Great Grandmother Lamberth was a good quilter. I own one quilt of hers, an improved 9 patch of the 1930s. My mother pieced one quilt as a teenager, but began diligently quilting in the 1970s when the quilting revolution began. She watched Georgia Bonesteel on television. She made scrap quilts so she could use up what she had. It was not in her to buy fabric for a quilt. After she had made several very successful quilts, she ask me one day (I was 18) if I thought it would do for her to "buy" fabric for a quilt. I said, "I certainly do. Especially if the quilt is going to be a pretty as these." She bought the fabric for a quilt and it is beautiful. When my dad died in 1998, my mother never quilted again. She has Alzeimers and now cannot remember that she ever quilted at all. A sad story, it's true, but makes me more determined to keep enjoying this thing I enjoy for as long as I can. But more than that, to keep my friendships going as long as I can. True frieinds are hard to come by and I have 9, NINE, Wonderful Wacky Friends.
1 comment:
Thanks for telling this story. I have been quilting with my mother for several years before she ended up like your mother with alzheimer. And now she does not want to do anything crafty anymore. It's sad. But I remember the good time when we sat quilting together and sharing patterns and fabric.
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