She started a quilting group at the local YWCA. She organized a little quilt show. I was proud of her. She made some great friends and made a yearly trip to Paduca. She passed away in 1989 at age 60. Her quilting group made a quilt as a memorial that hung in the YWCA , until the Y closed it's doors.
Her little quilt group went on to form a guild called piecemakers, to which I now belong since 2010.
This month, Karen, brought the little memorial quilt to guild as show and tell, and presented it to me. It was a big surprise and very much appreciated. I'm not the short one.
After years of raising my family, when I started quilting without distractions, I noticed that most of the quilts that we had made years ago that were color coordinated, were very dated and ....ugly lol. think avacado and gold. But the scrappy quilts were still relevant and...classic. I guess that is why I have evolved into a scrappy quilter. My stash was very much a mix of fabric over the years, and I wanted to use what I had. I still do. I still prefer all the "rules" of a long ago. It was a struggle to accept machine quilting. But, my favorite part is the piecing, so I had to move into the machine quilting era, so I could make as many quilts as I wanted. I didn't want to have someone else do the quilting, so I bought a used longarm. When we downsize, I think I can change my mind about that, too and leave it behind. I like to make bed size quilts for the practical part of things, but, I notice, I am thinking smaller these days.
I often feel sad that I didn't get a chance to grow old with my mother in law, and think she would have been a fun quilting friend.
One little quilt and lots of great memories. That is the real magic of quilting.
I am linking:
I never have moved into the longarm machine quilting era LOL - I just hand quilt as I want to. Nice post today about how quilting changes and the scrappy vs coordinated. Also nice to put a face on you :)
ReplyDeleteHow wonderful to receive the memorial quilt. Thank you for sharing your quilting journey. I'm a new follower of your blog so it's nice to know the "rest of the story" as Paul Harvey would say.
ReplyDeleteWhat a sweet gift for you! I enjoyed hearing the story of your MIL, Maggie - you're carrying on the scrappy quilt tradition in her memory!
ReplyDeleteOh my I love this story of your mother in law and you. She didn't get a long life which is such a shame because as you say you could have spent time quilting with her. Funny how ideas about what is ugly changes. I even find I find something I've made ugly, then a few months later I change my mind! Kathryn Quilts
ReplyDeleteYour story sounds almost like my story with my mother except she didn't make scrappy quilts, she made the perfectly pieced coordinated ones. She joined quilt guilds, taught quilting lessons at the Y and taught quilting through the extension homemakers organization. I could quilt and sew but I was busy having children and being a farm wife. When my youngest was a senior in HS, I decided it was time for some me time and started making more advances quilts. One of my fondest memories was taking mother to have cataract surgery, I was EPPing a grandmother's flower garden hexies. Mom look at the few I had completed and said that will be a very pretty quilt. She died, very unexpectedly, 6 weeks later. I've always thought how sad, I finally had the time for quilting, there was so much she could have taught me but she was gone. Thanks for sharing your story and allowing me to share mine.
ReplyDeleteThe ways quilting unites us on a beautiful journey!! I loved reading about you and your MIL. It's funny how I have always gravitated to scrappy quilts, my few controlled ones, I find boring!!
ReplyDeleteHow lovely you were presented with the quilt as a memory of your MIL. You're having a great quilting journey!
ReplyDeleteWhat a sweet presentation. Your MIL sounds like a motivated and fun quilter to hang out with.
ReplyDeleteWhat a lovely, sweet post. Your MIL was gone way too soon. My Granny was a quilter most of her life, and oh how I wish I had been smart enough to learn from her while I was in my teens and 20s.
ReplyDeleteI've been quilting since 2010 and finally started coming around to scrappy. In fact I was just thinking about that yesterday. I looked at a block I had made just last year and thought "it's way too uniform".
What a nice blog post! Thank you for sharing the story of your MIL, and of your own quilt journey. I started quilting around the same time you did, and I well remember all those "rules" about color coordinating, bias binding, mitered borders, and hand quilting only! Times have changed, now we can make any of those choices we like.
ReplyDeleteI don't have any relatives who quilt, but I miss a very, very good friend in Oregon who hand pieces and hand quilts very single quilt she makes, and they are gorgeous. I miss those lovely, carefree days where we'd spend the day yard saling, going to quilt shops & quilt shows. The best friend I ever had. Funny how we each had completely different tastes in fabrics, and how no matter how long between visits, we'd pick right up again where we left off, even though I'm 20+ years older! Deb
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