Month: January 2020

Carmen’s Calendar Quilt

I love it when people find new ways to share their stories!  Our quilt guild has an amazing Show and Tell session almost every month.  We learn so much from each other and are inspired by work with a fabric line we didn’t know about, a designer new to us, or just an individual’s “take” on an old pattern.

Carmen brought a fabulous story quilt to Show and Tell at last week’s meeting.  It’s a calendar quilt for the year 1998. There is a piece of fabric for every day of the year.

Vertical rows – there are twelve, of course – contain colorful fabrics that hold memories for Carmen.  She has a rich collection of conversation prints (fabrics with a recognizable prints, available since the 1800’s), having made several “I spy” quilts for her grandchildren.

Carmen chose an appropriate piece of fabric for each day and stitched it to the previous day’s selection.  I asked if she had to go to the store, searching for a particular motif.  She said, no, she went to her collection (arranged alphabetically from aardvark to zipper) and pulled an appropriate fabric.

When there was no commercial print available in her stash, she drew the design on fabric.  The tornado is one example. (There were actually two tornado blocks – Carmen did live in Missouri, after all.)

Other times, she used a typewriter to tell that day’s story.

Sometimes she added embroidery, or wrote details in with a pen.  

Just looking at the quilt and reading a few isolated blocks, I know it holds special memories for Carmen.  She misses the members of her guild in Missouri.  But I know she remembers fun times when she looks at the blocks representing their meetings or their road trips to go quilt shop-hopping.

She shared some stories of those ladies, like the one whose doctor told her that to treat her carpel tunnel syndrome, she should restrict her hand quilting to one hoop per day.  She went out and bought a bigger hoop!

If you are a quilter, I know the wheels in your head are spinning about how YOU could make this work in your world.  You should have heard the hum of ideas in our meeting room.  There were lots of, “oh, look, she….” and “I have these fabrics I could use…or….”.  

And, look at this!  She’s been sewing for her son and daughter all their lives, quilting off and on for 40 years.  In 2007 she won a blue ribbon for this quilt, made from shorts she had made for her son.  I love it!  

There was a pair of shorts he refused to wear.  She made them from this “ant” fabric.  They looked too real to him, so they were never worn.

This is the same son whose art work adorns the top of the April column of blocks.

Thank you, Carmen, for sharing your story, your technique, and your calendar quilt.  And the clothesline photo is fabulous.  If there is anything better than a story quilt, it’s a story quilt hanging on a clothesline.  I just love clotheslines!

Family Stories

Especially since writing 52 Tuesdays, I’ve encouraged people to preserve their history, to save the family stories for future generations.  Several people have told me that they decided to make a journal quilt similar to mine; others have said they were motivated to start keeping a written record of their days.  Both ideas thrill me – to know that my words inspired someone to record and share their stories.

But I’ve realized that I haven’t done enough to preserve my own stories, especially those of my childhood.  Late in 2019, I began doing just that.  The writing project that ensued might be the reason you saw fewer blog posts. The level of sharing is different when it’s being written for future generations and for strangers on the internet – I found it hard to switch gears.

But write personal stories and memories I did.  My daughter DJ had asked that I record family memories in my own handwriting.  I did some of that, but my arthritic hands and wrists rebelled.  And I’ve become accustomed to writing on a computer where editing is easier and later searchable; making it easier to answer the question, “Have I told this already?”

So the book I created included both handwritten and typed stories.  I used a notebook system where I could rearrange pages as thoughts did not come in a chronological order.  Too, I could add my own papers with photos or drawings, and use pages of different sizes.

The photos you see are a few of the interior pages where you get the idea.  I had quite a large extended family of aunts and uncles and cousins.  I printed a page with photos for each group and a chart that included family names.  That helps whatever subsequent generation is reading it to get relationships more clearly, I think.  Between those full sheets (8 1/2” x 11”) showing the family breakdown, I inserted smaller pages with stories.  

I continue to think of stories to share.  Now it’s a simple matter of writing them and inserting them in the book.  This is the gift that keeps on giving.  I see a need to add more photos, drawings, maps.

There are pages where Jim wrote stories about his childhood, too

It’s a given that any memory of mine is associated with fabric.  So the cover of the book is a collage of textile memories:  a lace dress my mother wore, a couple of dresses she made for me, a bit of silk from a dress she received as a child.  There’s part of a nail apron from my Daddy’s favorite hardware store, a pocket from a pair of his overalls, a bit of my Grandmother’s apron.   Remnants of clothing worn by my sister, me, Jim, and DJ herself are there, too.

I gave this album to DJ at Christmas.  It was well received and I’m relieved!  I’m relieved that this project is no longer a secret.  She has been doing some family research on Ancestry and has a lot of questions – some of which were hard to answer without revealing that I was on a quest, too.  Now the charts from Ancestry and the photos and stories from my parents’ albums can work together to solve some mysteries.