Jeana’s Journal

Recently I was asked: “Who were the women that inspired you to quilt? Do you still have the first quilt you made or has it been worn out and used up?” The quilt fragment shown above is the sole remaining piece of my first quilt. It is composed of leftovers and fabric scraps from my mother’s scrap drawer.

Summers were long and hot where I grew up and playing outside in the afternoons was out of the question in the desert. My mother was a wise and kind teacher to her brood of eight children. Five of us were girls.

Instead of trying to control the chaos of idle children on those hot summer afternoons, Mom organized us according to age and ability and taught us skills that became assets in our lives. Our living room was a hub of activity during the daily “Big Money Movie” weekday afternoons. One sister might be ironing, another mending socks by hand, another piecing quilt blocks on the sewing machine, and still another stitching hand embroidery on dish towels while the movie played.

My mother taught us to iron—first handkerchiefs and pillowcases, then skirts, and finally blouses and shirts—according to our age. She taught us to embroider—cute designs on the corner of dish towels she had constructed from bleached flour sacks, or cross stitch on inexpensive pillowcases from the five and dime store. She taught us to crochet—constructing afghans or lacy edges on the pillowcase we had embroidered. She taught us to quilt—piecing first. We chose our own pattern, she made a cardboard template, we cut the fabroc pieces (stringing them on a long piece of thread) for a quilt top. We then learned to use the sewing machine by piecing the quilt blocks together. When a quilt was on the frame we took turns sitting next to her at the quilt frame and learned how to hand quilt.

Hand quilting, reading, and crochet (very fine thread made into lacy doilies) were my mother’s favorite pastimes. In retirement she enjoyed many long afternoons in those pursuits.

As an adult she told me that she was unable to draft the star pattern I had chosen for my first quilt so she sent me down the street to her mother’s house for help. My grandfather actually drafted the pattern—he did that for Mom and Grandma when they needed help.

I made the blocks for my first quilt the summer when I was about twelve or thirteen years old. Those blocks were not made into a quilt until the summer after I graduated from high school.

I was going away to school in the fall and I needed a quilt for my dorm room bed. I remember vividly going to Grandma’s house with my blocks one summer afternoon. Our project was to put those blocks together into a quilt top. We arranged the star quilt blocks on the top of her bed in a pleasing arrangement (an early design wall?). And then, we pieced them together with fabric she had prepared beforehand. She had recycled the skirts of two full-skirted dresses into strips that were torn into appropriate lengths to sash and join the blocks together. While we worked Grandma told me about her own experiences when she was my age and going off to school in a far away town. My quilt and her stories connected us in physical and emotional ways that are still very dear to me.

Later that summer we had an old fashioned quilting bee where my grandma, sisters, and aunts all came and helped to complete my going-to-college quilt.

My story sounds like something out of the 19th century and I sound very old–even to me–but my first quilt was completed in the summer of 1969.

So in answer to the questions first posed, my first and most influential teachers were my mother and maternal grandmother. All of the skills that I have honed over the years began at the feet of these two lovely ladies. And, sadly my first quilt is worn out and gone except for the block that I salvaged in memory of that time in my life.

Recently I was asked: “Who were the women that inspired you to quilt? Do you still have the first quilt you made or has it been worn out and used up?” The quilt fragment shown above is the sole remaining piece of my first quilt. It is composed of leftovers and fabric scraps from my mother’s scrap drawer.

Summers were long and hot where I grew up and playing outside in the afternoons was out of the question in the desert. My mother was a wise and kind teacher to her brood of eight children. Five of us were girls.

Instead of trying to control the chaos of idle children on those hot summer afternoons, Mom organized us according to age and ability and taught us skills that became assets in our lives. Our living room was a hub of activity during the daily “Big Money Movie” weekday afternoons. One sister might be ironing, another mending socks by hand, another piecing quilt blocks on the sewing machine, and still another stitching hand embroidery on dish towels while the movie played.

My mother taught us to iron—first handkerchiefs and pillowcases, then skirts, and finally blouses and shirts—according to our age. She taught us to embroider—cute designs on the corner of dish towels she had constructed from bleached flour sacks, or cross stitch on inexpensive pillowcases from the five and dime store. She taught us to crochet—constructing afghans or lacy edges on the pillowcase we had embroidered. She taught us to quilt—piecing first. We chose our own pattern, she made a cardboard template, we cut the fabroc pieces (stringing them on a long piece of thread) for a quilt top. We then learned to use the sewing machine by piecing the quilt blocks together. When a quilt was on the frame we took turns sitting next to her at the quilt frame and learned how to hand quilt.

Hand quilting, reading, and crochet (very fine thread made into lacy doilies) were my mother’s favorite pastimes. In retirement she enjoyed many long afternoons in those pursuits.

As an adult she told me that she was unable to draft the star pattern I had chosen for my first quilt so she sent me down the street to her mother’s house for help. My grandfather actually drafted the pattern—he did that for Mom and Grandma when they needed help.

I made the blocks for my first quilt the summer when I was about twelve or thirteen years old. Those blocks were not made into a quilt until the summer after I graduated from high school.

I was going away to school in the fall and I needed a quilt for my dorm room bed. I remember vividly going to Grandma’s house with my blocks one summer afternoon. Our project was to put those blocks together into a quilt top. We arranged the star quilt blocks on the top of her bed in a pleasing arrangement (an early design wall?). And then, we pieced them together with fabric she had prepared beforehand. She had recycled the skirts of two full-skirted dresses into strips that were torn into appropriate lengths to sash and join the blocks together. While we worked Grandma told me about her own experiences when she was my age and going off to school in a far away town. My quilt and her stories connected us in physical and emotional ways that are still very dear to me.

Later that summer we had an old fashioned quilting bee where my grandma, sisters, and aunts all came and helped to complete my going-to-college quilt.

My story sounds like something out of the 19th century and I sound very old–even to me–but my first quilt was completed in the summer of 1969.

So in answer to the questions first posed, my first and most influential teachers were my mother and maternal grandmother. All of the skills that I have honed over the years began at the feet of these two lovely ladies. And, sadly my first quilt is worn out and gone except for the block that I salvaged in memory of that time in my life.