We never stop moving in my family, and I’m proof positive we get that from our Grandfather.  If it’s not work at the office, it’s taking care of the kids; if it’s not taking care of the kids, it’s working around the house; if it’s not working around the house, it’s putting up what we found at the farmer’s market; and if it’s not canning, I’m quilting.

Grampa lived to be 100 year’s old, and even at the end he never slowed down.  His life’s story is a simple one, but filled with these anecdotes that we all still tell and hold our own lives up to. 

He dropped out of school before hitting high school to help with his family because his father ran off.  He worked hard for the railroad until they went on strike in the 30’s or 40’s; at that point he and a friend saved literal pennies to leave home and drive down the east coast.  He met my grandmother shortly after that, and settled down into the first big break of his life.  He worked, raised his family, and had several side businesses because of his talents as a gardener, a woodworker and a quilter.

The first blankets I can remember are the quilts he made for me.  Later when I started to sew, I realized he was self-taught and didn’t use a sewing machine to make these epic creations until later in his life—every thing was done by hand.  He claimed it was because Gram couldn’t sew and he had to learn, but looking back, he loved creating the most complicated things he could with his hands. 

To this day we still hear stories from friends and families about him and how in quiet and simple ways he made their lives better.  He made my life better, I miss bantering about gardening time tables and what spoils of summer we have compared to him. 

It’s been three years since he passed, and I thought we had found all there was to find in the aftermath of a death.  But mom and dad found a quilt.  A quilt top, to be exact.  A quilt top he hand quilted using a Grandmother’s Garden pattern with paper hexis he must have cut from old church bulletins.  In it I can find fabrics from dolls I had when I was a little girl, to pieces from my own baby quilt.  It’s breathtaking, and it’s not even finished yet.

And it’s so gorgeous, it deserves to be finished.  Dad can’t sew, Mom isn’t a hand quilter, and neither is my sister.  Which leaves me, the one person in our quartet who has hand quilted before, and is the only one who can tackle this project. 

It’s a project that is going to take time, it’s a job that will take research and input to make sure the integrity of the quilt and the quilter is maintained, and it’s a project that seems worthy of documenting.  So here we are—refocusing my efforts in this space to document where this quilt takes me, and the side roads of other areas of my life that have been impacted by that well-lived life of my grandfather.  

Tags: hand quilting, quilting