Hope at
The Simple Life of Hope has started a weekly blog post titled, "Friday's Photo File" and I am joining in. She is encouraging us to post a photo, current or past, of our choosing and write about it. I love the idea!
Since my scanner is not working properly, most of my photos will be fairly recent.
One of the kids draped my quilt over a bench we have in the corner of my living room recently. And as I passed by I looked at it and reminisced about when it was made, how I learned how to quilt, etc.
I quickly ran to take a picture in case I wanted to ever write about it.
Quilting is not something that my mother did or her mother as far as I know. I have been fascinated by them for a long time, however, and when I worked in Pittsburgh in a chiropractic practice one of my coworkers was an avid quilter. Her name was Nora; she was not much older than me and she belonged to a quilting group. I can remember asking her question after question about quilting, how difficult it is to do, how she learned, and on and on it went. I think I talked about it as often as I could.
In the time I had worked with Nora, I was expecting my first baby. Before Austin was born Nora brought a gift into the office. It was in a fairly large, beautifully wrapped package and never once did I expect to receive such a lovely gift. It wasn't the quilt you see above, but it was the most beautiful quilt I had ever seen because it was made by her for my little boy. How generous! I felt honored that she would make a quilt and then be able to give away such a precious gift.
Quilts take time. The one above took me about 9 years because of the amount of time it takes plus add 5 children into the mix and there is no time left at the end of the day to sit and quilt.
After Austin was born, I decided to take a quilting class near the town of Carnegie, Pennsylvania, where we lived for the first 3 years of our marriage. I think the shop was in Heidelberg. Austin was about 10 months old and the class was 6 weeks long every Saturday for about 3 hours. I brought him along with me because I was nursing at the time. The class being taught was for beginners and it was a sampler quilt. Making a sampler gives you practice on various types of patterns and squares. I learned how to do everything by hand because I didn't own a sewing machine and my thought was that hand-quilting was more authentic. I don't believe that to be the case anymore. I think quilts made on sewing machines are just as special.
After 6 weeks I knew how to quilt from start to finish.
Unfortunately, I would put my project away for months at a time, buy new fabric, or start a new project, before I finally finished my first-ever quilt.
The finish date was September, 2005.
