My mother was always working on a quilt.
She worked two jobs throughout most of my growing up years, one full shift at a hospital and another six hours as a waitress. She also kept five children fed, did all the laundry with an old wringer washing machine, kept the house clean, and still managed, somehow, to produce two or three quilts every year in her “spare” moments.
Some of her quilts were made in a hurry, just for the warmth they would give to our beds on a cold winter night. Those quilts were big blocks cut from old winter coats and cast off work clothes. The pieced blocks were lined with an old blanket, backed with a sheet, and tacked together with heavy thread. Mama usually chose red for the tacking. Even a “hurry-up” quilt had to have some brightness to satisfy her urge to create something pretty.
That urge was really expressed in the pieced quilts she took more time creating. Sometimes they were made from tiny scraps of new fabric left over from other women’s sewing projects. But most of the time, Mama cut her quilt pieces from our outgrown clothes. It was fun to watch an intricate Turkey Track or Wedding Ring pattern take shape out of my last year’s school dresses and my brother’s shirts. Those colorful quilts were tightly rolled into a quilting frame and painstakingly hand quilted with my mother’s tiny even stitches.
I didn’t inherit my mother’s sewing talents. My only gift is the ability to string words together to relive a memory or tell a made up tale.
This site is all about the memories that make up Pieces of the Quilt.
Carolyn Paul Branch 