One of the discoveries more and more women are embracing is Quilting, and this page is about the modern “Quilting Quest” that I and thousands of other women are rediscovering today.
If you’ve always ociated quilting with “little old ladies,” be prepared to be shocked at what we were never taught about in school, and the incredible significance quilting represents to every woman today — in fact, many of the societal advances made over the last 100 years –for women AND men — may have never come about as quickly if not for women s ching quilts! To show you what I mean,
As a young girl I loved visiting my Grand, and one of my earliest memories is snuggling up with an old satin quilt in her bed. To me it was the plushest, most elegant thing I had ever seen.
“I have a quilt that my grandmother gave me as a wedding gift 24 years ago. All of my married life it has been like getting a hug from grandma just to hold it. I’ve always felt that a quilt (blanket) should be used, loved, and worn out.”
I learned quilting from Grand the way women handed it down for hundreds of years: organically, bit by bit. My Grand loved quilting with her lady friends, sometimes two or three times a week. When I got to go with I never felt “babysat.” I was part of her world, of her circle of friends! We chatted together, they let me cut squares of cloth and later let me join in the needlework with them… easy enough for even a small girl. I treasured our time together, and our quilting was an invaluable experience we shared.
While learning this way is wonderful, in today’s world we don’t have years to spend learning new techniques and skills. We want — no we NEED — information that is specific, detailed enough to use, and can be absorbed quickly. As I’ll share with you in a few moments, these are the reasons that later inspired me to create possibly the FASTEST way to learn this amazing skill: my Quilting Made Simple! Video Training Series.
My mother was an early career woman, and she inspired me with her own successes. She managed to juggle home and family with a career she enjoyed better than anyone I know. But Mom had no interest in quilting. For her it was just as well to buy a ready-made quilt or bedspread than spend the time to make it… maybe better. Taking the time to make a gift for someone? For her it wasn’t about the personal nature of the gift, but more the business of trading time for money. “Let’s just buy her something she’ll like and move on,” she would say. Frankly, even though my experiences with Grand had opened my eyes to the value of slowing down, clearing my head, letting my creative juices free to create something of beauty, purpose and value, I still struggled with the dollar value of my time vs. the quality, the many values I received. As I grew into a woman with a career of my own, I forgot. I even began somehow identifying quilting with something older women did more than “modern” women.
Most history and ancestry sites don’t help us connect with our female ancestors — they are all written in a patriarchal way, often with the women as footnotes. How much about me will my granddaughters know about or remember? My job? My awards and accomplishments? The dates of my birth, marriage, death?
How do we p our life experiences, your wit, your p ions, your personality, the joys and pains of your life? Can these qualities be p ed down as a legacy to the girls and women who come after you?
For my Grand, every patch of fabric on every quilt she’d ever made carried the story of her life and those of others in our family. These were what she p ed on to me. As we spent time quilting together she’d enfold me in yet another part of our family history and love:
Here was a piece of her sister Jane’s dress, the one she wore as a suffragette marching so women could vote, right next to a patch from Jane’s husband Uncle Ted, who finally gave up and accepted his wife’s political p ions. Here was a section from Gramps’ uniform in the World War. There was a piece of a seed bag, the kind she used in the “Depression Quilts” she s ched and sold to feed her children. Another swatch was part of her overalls from her job at a shipyard during the war. And here was a patch from my own mother’s cradle… 
Home