QuiltingAndPatchwork.com   
Have you discovered old quilts and/or patches in your attic or a closet?  Are there quilting patterns there?   
When cleaning out a closet in the old farmhouse where I grew up, after my mom developed Alzheimer’s, I discovered some old quilting patches.  Some were simply pre-cut pieces and others consisted individual blocks with the pieces stitched together.
I’d never seen these before and knew my mom hadn’t made them.  Although she encouraged me in my quiltmaking, she hadn’t done any since she was a young girl.  When I discovered them, Mother no longer had any memories about the blocks and …read more

QuiltingAndPatchwork.com 
 If your quilt could tell a story, what would it say? I think of the quilt I call, The Wedding Quilt.  I recall it always lying on the bed in the guest room of our farmhouse.  I can visualize one day, as Mother, Sister and I cleaned the room and made the bed for a visit from my aunt and uncle. 
Mother had aired the quilt on the clothes line on the south side of the house and now was folding it to place at the foot of the bed.  I don’t know if Sister or I asked a question or Mother …read more

  Sharing family memories and creating legacies seem to have been popular posts throughout 2007.  Whenever I’ve written on this topic and shared stories about my quiltmaking, my mom’s, my daughter’s and granddaughter’s, I’ve received responses from quilters and fabric artists who wanted to share with me.
I hope I’ve encouraged you with your quiltmaking and fabric art this year, have brought you  information and insight, have gotten you to look at some of your work with new insight and to explore different techniques.
Here are some 2007 posts you might want to check out:
Memories of Quilting and Tea with Grandma
My Mother, the Country Grocer, Inspired …read more

What interests you at Quilting and Patchwork? 
  As a new year approaches, I’m making plans for this blog and what I’ll include throughout 2008.  Input from you, my readers and friends, would help me make this a blog that will help, inform, entertain, and encourage you as you pursue your quiltmaking and fabric arts this year.
*Quilting Memories and Journaling – Due to the great response I’ve been receiving (comments on the blog and in private e-mails) to my posts about quilting memories, family legacies and preserving these, I will do more along this line. 
*Introducing Other Blogs – As I browse around the blogosphere and …read more

When I read about the pin cushion contest, Call for entries: Pincusions,  at Noreen’s Hankering for Yarn, my mind slipped into “memory gear” and I thought of my first pinchusion.  When my grandmother (Nanny) and I were quilting, she decided I needed a pincushion like hers.
I don’t know if she bought it, or found she had an extra.  However, it was one of those tomoato red ones with the little red ball or tomato attached for keeping needles and pins sharp.  This remained in my sewing box for years.  (I have no idea where it, and the little sewing box …read more

            In my previous post about Grandparents’ Day, I suggested one way to commemorate was recalling your quilting occasions with Grandmother…if you quilted with her.  So I should do this myself. 
My maternal grandmother, Nanny, taught me the first rudiments about sewing and quilting when I was 6-8 years old.  Our first sewing sessions together consisted of making clothes for my dolls.  Nanny even made a cloth leg for one of my dolls who lost hers.
Then Nanny let me help her make quilts for us four children.  I recall sitting at her kitchen table, cutting pieces, then sewing them together by hand.  …read more

                                           Sunday, September 9 commemmorates National Grandparents’ Day.  How are you celebrating this occasion?
*Visit your grandparents.
*Invite your grandparents to your home.
*Take them out to eat.
*Send them a note, a card, a gift.
*Phone them if they live too far away.
*”Adopt” someone for a grandparent if yous live far away or are no longer living.
*Teach grandparent appreciation to your children.
         *Make a Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt! 
*Write  “What grandparents mean to me”  story and post it on your blog.
*Tell your children and grandchildren about your grandparents so those stories aren’t forgotten        and lost to your family history.
*Recall quilting with your grandmother…or resolve to …read more

The other evening, my husband and I related to  friends an incident that happened in a business we owned several years ago.  We all laughed over what happened and it helped boost the couple over some challenges they were experiencing.
“Yes,” I thought, “time does lend humor to situations we find difficult to laugh at the time they’re happening.” 
Then I recalled situations in my quilting business I can look back on now with humor.  If I’d learned to see the humor while they were happening, I wouldn’t have had so much stress at the time.
*”Mary, the batting is coming through the back of …read more

Writers say they have “muses” that inspire them with their work.  Once at a writers’ workshop I attended, the teacher instructed us to describe our muse, either in words or a sketch. 
 Until then I didn’t even know I had a muse or was supposed to!  However, as I put pencil to paper, a whimsical lady appeared, who seemed to be floating in air above a desk with my work.  Now when I’m asked if I have a muse she comes to mind. 
         Does this apply to my quilting, too.? Could you say that someone or something inspires you…one person or …read more

You’ll find a delightful idea for using yo-yo’s as flowers in the latest issue of Quilter’s Newsletter Magazine.  Also, online, there is a free pattern for this Yo-Yo Tree.
If you have, or can obtain, the March issue of this magazine, you’ll find more information on Gathered Yo-Yo Flowers in the “Quiltmakers’ Workshop” portion.
Have fun making these lovely yo-yo flowers.  Perhaps this will bring back memories of quilting with your grandmother, as it does with some people.