Merry Christmas!

Yikes! How did we go from Happy 4th of July to Merry Christmas? I for one, got totally sidetracked after the 4th with preparing for back surgery. The surgery was in September and then had to deal with the healing process. I had planned on using my recovery time to work on the blog, do some quilting, etc; but it didn't work that way. I had no idea I would be dealing with the kind of pain I was having. But enough of that! I'm well on the way to recovery. I'm trying to get sister Susan to either upload a picture of the quilt she made for her grandson and his new wife and also one of the crotcheted hats she is making. She was describing them to me today and they sound adorable. Crotcheting isn't one of the things I have ever mastered. My sister Denise is expert at it and makes the most beautiful things. At Quilting Cousins, we like to brag about any of your sewing or crafting accomplishments. In our album of quilts we have made, sister Susan (country quilter) put pictures of the quilt top that was made by our grandmother and Aunt Dorothy. There were only two that survived that we are aware of and sister Barbara had one that she recently gave to me. I am going to do some repair work on it and then hand quilt it. The entire quilt top is pieced by hand with the tiniest of stitches. I remember Aunt Dorothy telling me how she and her sisters and mother made their clothes by hand. A treasure such as this quilt top made of pieces of my grandmother, Aunt and grandfather's clothing, can only be hand quilted into a quilt. If you looked at each individual piece of fabric, by today's standard, they are not beautiful, but some really plain while others really loud and old fashioned. When you think of how each piece was cut by hand with precision,without the benefit of our sharp cutting tools we use today and then pieced together by hand with tiny stitches and as my mind can envision, done so while sitting in the front parlour by the radio while listening to music or their favorite radio show. The tradition of quilting was not passed down to us by grandma or any of our aunts as far as I can remember. That is to say, they didn't sit us down and show us how to do it. I will say that I remember Aunt Dorothy talking about sewing and things like that. I appreciate the treasures they left us in the wonderful memories we have of them and obviously the ability to sew and create. In conclusion, for this Christmas holiday, I am making doll clothes for my granddaughter Madison, and a few other things. Hopefully next year, I will get ambitious enough to start early and make some quilts for my kids or start on the quilts I want to make for my siblings, or finally make the wall hanging for Christmas I have been wanting to make for a few years but just never started on it. For Christmas I would like for Santa to help me understand finding my way around the blogspot so I can add patterns and things like that. This has certainly been a challenge for me. Have a great Christmas and quilting cousins, keep those wonderful pictures coming of the things you create so we can share them with whomever comes across our blog. By the way, the adorable picture inserted is of my grandchildren ( Natalie, Noah and Evan helping grandma recreate the nativity scene about 12 years ago. Quilting Cousin Debbie