added to the front. Nap times and the evenings after my girls are in bed I begin. my first quilt. No rotary cutter just a pencil, a 3inch cardboard square, and scissors . After several weeks I have a box of over 3000 squares. Every line drawn , every cut gave me a sense of piece and a time if relaxing. The stress of the busy days would melt away. I had found my therapy, my passion! I drew the pattern out on quadrille paper and colored the blocks with my 2yr. old's color pencils.
Now to piece this together. My husband had bought me a Singer sewing machine when I became pregnant with our first child. I made all my maternity clothes, but this quilt , my first masterpiece would be hand pieced just as my grandmother had done. The piecing took over a year. Working on it in little snatches of stolen moments. My box of precious squares, knocked over many times, fabric flying began to have less small squares and more big squares as my quilt began to come together. My baby nursed, crawled, took her first steps , seasons passed and I stitched that quilt and it grew. The top was finally finished, the borders added and I help it out for my grandmother to see. It had grown into a king size quilt, bigger than our newlywed bed and I loved it! My grandmother smiled and praised my hand work but said, " Donna honey, why did you see this by hand ? You have a machine?" My response," Grandma , you made your quilts by Gand! I wanted to make mine the way you made yours!" My sweet Grandma Maggie laughed and informed me that she only did her sewing by hand because she didn't have a machine. " law girl! Use your machine! " thus was my last full sized hand pieced quilt. And I love it.
We moved out of our little trailer in my parents' yard and moved into our first home. Our home we still live in today. My husband joined an OB/GYN group and worked many long hours. We had a dining room, but no money for furniture so my husband made me a quilt frame and I set it up. Every once in awhile I would go in and add a few stitches or draw my feather circle pattern on the muslin and the girls and their new brother would play underneath and pretend all kinds of games while my quilt lay on that frame being more and more neglected. We finally bought dining room furniture and my quilt went into a closet and the frame was packed away into the storage building. Life went on, other projects made but my heart remembered my " first" and I longed to finish it.
1995 my Dr. told me I needed a hysterectomy! I'm only 35 years old! But the pain hand other symptoms were robbing me of a life I wanted to enjoy so July came and my uterus went. I had to recover for two weeks. What will I di for two weeks? My husband brought out my precious unfinished quilt and my girls and I sat together for two weeks and stitched on that quilt, talked, laughed, and watched old black and white movies. They discovered Cary Grant, Gregory Peck, Fred& Ginger, and the love of patchwork and Gand quilting. I have a treasure that spends its time hanging over a chair or coveting my bed. My nest is empty , but so full of memories of love, joy, sorrow, and time spent together and my first and favorite warm and cozy quilt made with love, excitement, and sharing.
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