After some reflection, I decided to erase the little blurb about me being a mom, wife, blah, blah, blah. I am most certainly all of those,as well as a quilter. But since this is about me as a quilter, I feel the desire to tell how I got to this point. I know most have already heard this story but I will keep telling it as often as I can, so here goes:
Unlike most quilters, I don’t have a story of quilting being handed down in my family, generation by generation. I didn’t sit on my grandma’s lap and make doll quilts. I had never really even seen a sewing machine and I barely knew what a quilt was when I married my husband. But in Jeremy’s family, quilts are a big deal. My husband’s grandma and grandpa made quilts all the time and always seemed to be working on a project. In fact, they made quilts for the annual family reunion for people to win. This was really my first encounter with quilts and quilting.
At these family reunions, they had quilts for all the generations. If you came to the reunion and had not won a quilt before, you were entered to win a quilt. They also had quilts for newly married couples, as well as a “hodge-podge quilt” that anyone could win, regardless if they had won before. Its was so neat to see all the quilts laid out and to see how excited people were about maybe winning one. My husband didn’t win a quilt that year and I thought that maybe I would have grandpa show me how to make a quilt. I bought some fabric and he began the lessons.
My first quilt was a simple 9 patch quilt. As I started on the first block, he showed me how to cut out the nine blocks and how to sew them together. Once I finished the block, he said, “Now let me show you the easy way.” Then he got out the rotary cutter and we really got busy. So began my “quilting career”. I still have the quilt I made on our bed and even though there are lots of mistakes, it always reminds me of grandpa and the time we spent working on quilts together. He is no longer with us, but he has been such an inspiration in my life and I am so thankful for that.
