Well, THEO, with the pretty musical notes as your logo...
I seem to have lost your sweet message, but it touched my heart. I am so happy someone in today's world still loves a grandmother! And to think that she inspired you to be a quilter is the best story yet.
I never knew a grandmother on either side of the family, but my mother loved to sew. She told me that her mother had brought in a meager income back in the early 19th centruy by sewing embroidered dust caps. Would any one of us know what that is? The ladies all wore long hair put up on top of their heads and of course wanted to keep it as clean as possible as long as possible. Times were rough back then. So she made the traditional little elastic type and shaped dust caps to use when they did their house cleaning. I suppose vacuumes were not invented by then and most people could not afford carpet anyway. Apparently my grandmother was well-known for her sewing and embroidery skills. She passed that ability down to my mother so there was always lots of cloth at our house.
So how does that all translate to quilting? I began cutting pieces of cloth (out of the middles of yardage) when I was two. You know any mother is going to be upset about that if the yardage were being saved for somethign special. Then I learned to find scraps of cloth she had laid aside and made things like coin purses. Of course the purses could not be given away empty, so I "borrowed" the change from the milk bottles set out for our milk man. Hmmmm! Got into trouble for that one too! Then someone finally gave me a piece of cloth of my own and I was allowed to make my first dress before I was eight. Those precious little clippings from the corners and sides could not be wasted, so my mother and my aunt showed me how to put them together for a doll quilt or doll dresses.
The doll quilt is what caught my heart, so my "career" as a quilter went from there. Most of my quilts have been for gifts--weddings, new babies and even just because. But someday (when I manage to get back home) I still want to make one for every grandchild in our family. There are 17 now and I need to quit this and get busy!
The message I get from all this is that it takes lots of tender love and care from someone who wants you to succeed at something useful. I see some little girls who know nothing but TV and boys and it breaks my heart.
GramMER