2020 31 Day Blog Writing Challenge - Day Sixteen - Why Do I Sew?

Why do I sew? Because I can...

At first, what I sewed was clothing. I made quite a bit of my garments from Jr High to College. I took Home Ec in High School. The first sewing project was a skirt. Now, I had already sewn many a skirt by then. The teacher said to come to class with fabric and a pattern. She expected a normal skirt pattern with a zipper - those were the kind of skirts most girls wore in that time period - we didn't get to wear pants to school. I came in with a wrap around skirt pattern since that was something I had not yet tried and was all the rage. Teacher was very upset with my choice of pattern! She said the purpose of the lesson was to put in a zipper. I had put in MANY zippers by that point. So I picked a dress pattern and made both in the same time that the others spent on making their skirts, just so she could see me put in a zipper! The challenge on the wrap around skirt turned out to be the buttonholes.

Many years later when I became a quilter, my Mom presented me with a flip top crate of all the scraps that she saved from her sewing projects and mine! She had intended to ask my Granny to make quilts from them, but by then, Granny had passed - so that project fell to me.

This became several quilts (and I still have a lot of the scraps left!)

This is the first quilt out of those scraps. I made this for my Mom to give to my Sister. And she has loved it almost bare. The applique's were originally done with silk thread which did not last with heavy use! I repaired it a few years ago, going back around all of the applique. 

She had asked for butterflies, ladybugs and dragonflies. I alternated the bugs with flower patches and the quilting thru those flower blocks looks like the trail of a bug. 

The blue fabric is not included in the scraps - but being a new quilter (this was probably my fourth quilt) I bought a HUGE amount!

There is a poem written by my Mom on the label.

Next is the one that I made for me - Heart's Garden - several years and many other quilts under my belt. It is a two sided quilt, intended to use up those scraps - but, I still have a tub of scraps left! The fabric for the wrap around skirt is the top big heart on the right side. The fabric for the dress is the pink heart on the second row from the bottom. 

There are SOOO many memories in these quilts. Band uniforms, dirndls for our trip to Germany, Grand Bethel dresses, swimsuits, formals and a bridesmaid dress, the dress Mom and I made when I was sent home after a race riot at the school, shirts and Easter dresses, play clothes for the summer. 

I used the blue from Sister's quilt on the back and had just enough of that to make the big blue pieces. The green sashing on the front was from the aprons for the dirndls. The blue sashing was from a band uniform. The white was new fabric, similarly to Sister's quilt's blue. The squares were made using Quilt As You Go. Ended up having to re-sew those long pieces several times to get the intersections to line up -by then, the quilt was really heavy and kept pulling out of alignment. I ended up hand basting to get it to stop squirreling around. My Dad made me a Plexiglas square so I could square up all of the squares.

There is a poem written by my Mom on the label on mine too. Plus some pictures of my Mom and Sis and me wearing items from these fabrics.

front

back

This is a quilt-let that I made from the corner cutoffs from Sister's quilt. This became a lap quilt for my Mom. The design was to try to make columns with the colors spinning around the single color in the center - Twisted Pole layout. Eh, it did not work out really well with these leftovers - the columns would have been better if they were a different color. Can you see the columns? (the elongated diamonds)   I tried to make the columns stand out more by heavily quilting them. Might have worked better if I used a different color of thread.

Link to the Muppin Blog Writing Challenge