Memories of Granny’s Quilts- Guest Post by Kristen King

QuiltingAndPatchwork.com 

MEMORIES OF GRANNY’S QUILTS

Guest post by Kristen King

(From time to time I shall have guest posts by other quilters and quilt lovers.  Kristen King, who also blogs at b5media, shares her memories of her great-grandmother’s quilts in this and some subsequent posts.)

By all rights, quilting should be in my blood. Sewing of some sort should be, anyway. My great-grandmother, Flora, who I knew as Granny, made dozens of quilts in her lifetime. She also made countless doilies and dresses, shirts, skirts, you name it. She taught my mother to sew, and Mom made clothes for herself as a teen and clothes for me when I was growing up. When her mod outfits came back into fashion in the ‘90s, she modified them for me.

Granny lived on a farm, I think near Lynchburg, Virginia. I have only one memory of visiting there. We watched As the World Turns in a white farmhouse, and I put my hand on the still-hot burner of the electric stove and screamed so loud my throat was raw for days. My hand blistered, and Granny and my mom wrapped it in cloths and I carried around a pot of cool water to keep my burns wet.

When she got older, Granny moved from the farmhouse to a trailer to be closer to her oldest daughter, my mother’s mother. We visited her there once, too, and I remember that the living room was dominated by an enormous quilting hoop, and there were scraps of fabric and batting everywhere.

I didn’t know Granny well at all, but I like to think that her quilts tell a lot about her, and about me, too. 

I’ll be sharing some of those stories as I guest post here on Quilting and Patchwork.

Kristen King is a prolific blogger who writes for b5 at Lively Women  and Biz Chicks Rule. You can also find her freelance writing blog at Inkthinker.