Just finished reading all the stories and am amazed by how similar we all are. My mother was the oldest daughter of 12 children and since my Grandmother preferred to work in the fields with my Granddad and the rest of the children, as they got old enough, she was a little mother and housewife from a very early age. She was sewing as a very little girl and continued to sew for other people well into her 80's. She let me sew doll clothes out of scraps from the time I was about 4 or 5 years old. Still have one of those doll dresses.
Anyway, I got married young, had 3 children, when to work full time in the late 70's, making clothes for myself and my children, as well as all kind of home dec projects.
Widowed at 47, lost interest in sewing, children grown, wonderful grandkids arrived but I really didn't sew for them. Then...Feb. 3, 2002 my youngest grandchild was born with many problems. Deaf, coloboma, no vision in one eye, inability to swallow, bi-lateral clef pallet and unilateral cleft lip. When he did swallow his secretions usually went straight to his lungs which resulted in 30 or 31 pneumonias before his death Feb 3, 2008.
During one of his frequent hospital stays I saw a small sensory blanket (about 12" square) but they wanted $36 for it so I went home that night and made one for him and several extra which my daughter promptly gave away to mothers she had gotten acquainted with in the hospital. I have made dozens of these in the past few years. All babies love them, not just special needs children. When he needed hearing aids we didn't have enough money to buy the type he needed, so we started making purses. Sold many! Never want to make another purse! The hearing aids didn't really help him.
What saved his life and gave us a few more wonderful years with him was a Tracheostomy but he was in the hospital for 2 months that time. He came home from the hospital on a Wednesday and on that weekend my mother had some kind of an episode, not a stroke according to doctors, but that's how she acted. Later diagnosed with alzheimers. I moved in with her that weekend to care for her. In the second year she started sleeping so much of the time I had to have something to do. I couldn't leave her alone because she fell a lot and she did try to wander off a time or two before I put alarms on the doors.
I started to quilt...
have cried while making many projects since my Mom died in
the spring of 2007,
kept myself sane while grieving for my grandson since
Feb. 2008.
Still crying, still quilting.