Grandma’s Fabric
Last Saturday I went home to visit my mom and help her clean out her parents house. My grandmother passed away almost 2 years ago and Mom, her siblings, and Granddad have all been cleaning and sorting and chucking and donating piles and piles and piles of stuff from the house since then. How did they collect so much stuff? I vow never to collect that much, I will only aquire things if I need them or if I could use them in the forseeable future.
My grandmother was the most amazing person, she was fabulously active and creative (but you’d have to be with 4 kids and job as an elementary school teacher!) I will always remember Grandma sewing, she would make just about anything and everything you could possibly need. She sewed shirts, nighties, skating costumes, dresses, pants, gloves, hats, jackets, etc. for all of her kids and grandkids. She would also take just about every quilting class available and started some fabulous quilts (she had my knack for starting things and not quite finishing them.) So needless to say, her fabric stash was monumental. I kid you not, if you put all the fabric she had together, it would fill a bedroom, wall to wall and floor to ceiling! Not to mention a small rainbow of threads to match. She had every kind of fabric imaginable, from terry cloth to batiks, fleece to flannel, cottons to silks.
Saturday though was all about going through her newest aquisitions, which was my personal favourite fabric time period, because Grandma had started to do free stitching workshops (which required many texture coloured fabrics in similar colours to create landscapes and underwater fish quilts), Japanese style quilts (with such beautiful prints!) and she’d started liking the bright coloured batik patterned fabric that I adore. Mom and I found some absolutely perfect fabrics (yes, I do have a purpose for these fabrics!) and we even found some of Grandma’s finished wall hangings that Mom had been looking for, including a Grand Canyon, the Tea House, a rainbow rocket ship to the stars (I think it was called Reach for the Stars) and another Japanese inspired blue quilt. I can not wait to have time to start making quilts again, it is really something I’d like to do to remember my grandma by.
Goddess Undefined 