Quilt Blocks and Recipes

Today is Monday, January 12, 2009. The sun is about to shine. It is cold outside. But it is nice and warm inside.
My "good knee" has now turned into a "bad knee." I am doing a lot of sitting down these days. Glen said to me, "While you're sitting why don't you finish that sampler quilt you started? You can give it to me for my birthday." (He had found the parts of it again as he sorted through the garage.) And he brought me out the box of quilt blocks. I started working on it. Oh my!
In 1982 - twenty seven years ago - I took a quilting class at Bakersfield College. I loved the class and we learned a lot of techniques. I actually had four completed blocks quilted and sewn together. That was the final class assignment. I had several more individual blocks completed - piecing and quilting. Then I had several of the blocks made which I had never started to quilt.
I spent several hours checking it all out to decide just what I needed to do. The original "plan" was to make a queen size sampler quilt for our bed. In lap quilting you had to make a plan on graph paper showing which pieces would have the dividing strips sewn onto them before you started to quilt. I knew right where the plan was. As a part of the class we also had to create a notebook with notes from the class and other quilting information we gathered through the semester. The plan was in that notebook.
I've always been interested in quilts. My grandmother was a quilter - a very skilled quilter. She could get 5 tiny stitches on her needle as she quilted. She was admired by all her quilter friends because of her skill. Well, Grandma sewed everything. She made me several dresses, all hand sewn, and we all marveled at her tiny stitches, more precise and even than the sewing machine.
And Grandma collected quilt patterns from The Grit and The Capper's Weekly, two popular weekly newspapers received through the mail. Well, when we started this notebook I gathered up all of her clipped out ideas and added the ones my mother had also collected and began to watch for some of my own. Mother and Grandma created some designs of their own, too. My notebook began to bulge with all these quilting ideas.
I decided I would make a unique cover for my notebook. So I did a strip design with some of the most gorgeous scraps of silks, satins and velvets I had been given by other people. I added some lace and kept sewing until my piece was big enough. Lo and behold when I sent one of my daughters searching for the notebook, it had expanded into three. I'd forgotten that. In fact the first notebook she dug off the bottom shelf of the bookcase did not have the "plan." She came up with the next one. It didn't have the plan either. Finally she got the right one. Now, all three of these notebooks, mind you, were covered with fabric. The first was all puffy and fancy - a gift from some friend. The other two were ones I had covered with my strip quilting. And all three were bulging with pages of ideas and information about quilts. Oh my! I am such a collector!
I know that somewhere in all my "stuff" I also have quilt pieces my mother cut for a double wedding ring quilt. I just cannot bear to part with them. And I know there are some 9 patch quilt blocks she pieced together and never got sewn into a quilt top. I can't part with them either.
Anyway, I spent some hours looking through the notebooks, savoring memories of the past. I started working again on this sampler quilt. I can barely get three stitches on my needle and I have decided this is a hard way to make a quilt. It is true that it can be done on your lap. You don't have to set up a quilting frame that fills your whole room. But it is sure a hard way to get a quilt done. Not only do you have to make with quilt blocks but you have to cut the backing and batting apart and then stitch it together again. Oh my!
I was discussing quilting with a friend yesterday. She said, "If you can't get to heaven without being able to quilt, I am not going to make it." Well, I have proved I can quilt and I love quilts. I'm not sure I love the making of them. My sampler quilt is progressing. I am changing the "plan." It is much smaller than the original but Glen will never run across the unfinished pieces again as he sorts through the garage. I AM GOING TO MAKE IT COMPLETE.
And I know I will keep watching out for those quilt patterns I keep running across in various newspapers and magazines. I think it must be a hereditary charastic. Just like collecting recipes. I inherited that from my mother and my grandmother, too. Grandma, of course, didn't have so many sources for recipes as we do nowadays. But she had quite a lot. Arm and Hammer Baking Soda had a little printed booklet - darn, it doesn't have a year printed on it. Calumet Baking Soda also had one. I can't part with those old recipes.
Now Mother collected cook books. Oh boy! I never counted how many she had. She collected them from everywhere she traveled, all across the United States. Mostly she liked to collect ones made by Ladies Church Groups - all tried and tested on families and friends.
Once you start collecting cookbooks that is the gift of choice from everyone you know. Lo and behold, I can't resist looking at cookbooks either. My favorite one in my collection is a hand printed, decorated one I picked up at an Antique Store in Cameron, Missouri. Talk about devotion, hand printed with original drawings, and made on a mimeograph machine. Who remembers those old things? Man, are we ever spoiled with our computers, printers, and copiers?
Anyone remember the 5000 cookbooks we made for the Sierra Band to raise money to go to Ireland? Whose brainy idea was that???
Speaking of recipes, the recipe for breakfast this morning is about to come off the stove so I will stop this rambling and say - That's all for today.