Originally Posted by gaigai
Ah yes, the generation gap. Or the total comprehension gap. When I did my avatar quilt for my grandpa, after he died and I got it back, I lent it to a quilt show in his home town. Before I sent it I had it appraised, and was blown away when the appraisal was in the thousands of dollars. Well!!! When I told my colleagues at work, one of the younger girls said, "It would have been a lot easier and cheaper just to buy him a quilt. Why go to all that trouble and expense?" There just isn't an answer they will understand.
Exactly. How can I explain that when I sit down to hand quilt, the house is quiet, the others have all gone to bed, and I can feel my grandmother's and great-grandmother's blood running through my veins? How can I explain that calming feeling that floods over me, that slows the world down to a pace that I can really enjoy?
Of course you can buy a quilt. Of course you could make it faster on the machine. But the PROCESS, the sitting and watching a thing being created under your fingers with only a scrap of fabric, a needle and a thread, and your imagination, cannot be equaled. Some will always find it slow and frustrating. But I find it ties me to my ancestral heritage in ways that no other effort does.