Those women in our family who were quilters are too numerous to mention by names. I sat at the feet of my grandmother, Tracie Cole, as she and her friends quilted on their projects. Vaina Lee Cole Heiderman, my mother, also, spent much of her time quilting the much used quilts that covered each of our beds. Most of our family quilts (and I am proud to own four generations of quilts), were made as 'utility' quilts. They were meant to be used and meant to be laundered....and they were!When it came time for me to take up the stitching arts, I was about seven. My stitches were big and crooked, but they improved with time and by the time I was ten, I was doing embroidery on tea towels and crocheting on table cloths and hankies. I was making doll clothes by that time and had learned to knit from a german lady at the local five and dime store.
My grandmother, Tracie, started teaching me to quilt in 1955, while I was living with her and granddad. Those lessons served me well, because I was ready and had some memory of quilting when I began in earnest to quilt in 1993. Starting out with lap size quilts and progressing to large ones, designer hangings and embellished quilts to wear and hang.
Quilting has progressed these days to unlimited imagination in design and fabric. Quilting is still useful in a utility fashion, however, quite unique and beautiful in fashion wearable.
The watercolor painting I did this year, 2008, to commemorate my love of quilting is shown above (it should be on the horizontal, but I haven't figured out how to do that yet).
