Quilting Forever...Housework Whenever!

Okay, Okay...I have to apologize for the lame title.  I couldn't think of a good title about quilts, so I did a search for quotations about quilting.  I went with this one, because there weren't too many other inspiring ones, to say the least.  Probably because, like many homemade and handmade creations, quilting became viewed as old-fashioned and even archaic over the past 50 years.  Instead of sewing/making your own goods, people happily trotted out to department stores to buy shoddier versions en masse. Quilting, sewing, cooking, canning and the like all became seen as Pioneer-era silliness.  Happily, we all know that handmade/homemade is making a comeback.

Luckily for me, I have people in my life who are embracing handmade/homemade right along with me.  In addition to my 3 HHH friends, I have family members who are in the midst of this movement.  My mom has been passing my great-grandmother's recipes on to me, and has been whipping up lovely baked good from scratch in recent years.  My dad has always been a prominent cook in our household growing up, and continues to make famous things, usually with the flair that can only come from a Texan.  And my mother-in-law is a gifted seamstress, quilter, and creator of all things handmade.  And now my sister-in-law is getting in on all the fun by taking up sewing and knitting!

When I met Carl, I was surprised to hear that his mother had her own sewing room.  This was way before I started getting into handmade/homemade, and I was one of those people who was surprised by people actually sewing their own things.  It just seemed like no one did it anymore.  Especially then, a whopping ten years ago (time flies!) the movement had dwindled.  I was absolutely astonished to hear that Carl's mom had made wedding gowns, bridesmaid dresses, clothes of all sorts for children and adults and, in a weird twist of fate, had made the prom dress for a girl in my high school class.  (We discovered this years after the fact!)

About four years ago, Carl's mom, Carol, expanded into making purses.  I recently talked about how I only carry purses and bags from her (and now my SIL, Stacy.) She has a real flair for picking out cute coordinating fabrics, and the bag designs have gotten progressively more awesome and varied over the years.  Recently, Carl's mom took up quilting. For my 29th (yikes!) birthday this past April, she gave me a picnic quilt.  Check it out:

What makes a picnic quilt nice is that it's a smaller size than most other quilts.  Don't get me wrong, there's no need find fault with a large quilt.  When I was in high school, my sister's boyfriend's mother (following?) was a quilter and made me my own quilt.  I remember going to the fabric store with her and picking out all the different fabrics.  That was probably 12 years ago, and I still have the quilt in my linen closet, where I trot it out on cold nights, when I'm feeling sick or down, or when I'm just in the mood for extra comfort.  Friends and family who stay the night at our house are given that quilt to use, because it is extraordinarily soft, warm and just generally amazing.  This picnic quilt, though, is smaller and can be used more often and for more occasions.  As the name implies, you could throw it in your car and take it to a lovely destination, where you would then proceed to picnic upon it.  I will probably do this eventually.  For now, I've kept it on the arm of our loveseat, where I throw it over myself when reading or relaxing.  It's small, so it doesn't take over the entire couch, and it's made of lighter material, so it doesn't make me extremely hot. (It's summer, after all!)


Here are some more views of the quilt, along with the underlying striped fabric:

My MIL continues to make more quilts, and SIL is making them too.  Look for future posts! And I'll end the current post with another corny quilting adage I came across; this one is appropriate for Carl and me:  Blessed are the children of quilters, for they will inherit the quilts!  Go us!