Turning Straw Into Gold

This post was inspired by The Pioneer Woman, who had one day been looking at quilts, in catalogs, and posted some pictures of her favorite ones. 

If you are not familiar with PW, you would not know that she is originally from the city, and so must be forgiven her mistaken idea that you can buy real quilts out of catalogs.  I scolded her for this amateur mistake (lightly) in the comments section.  I was not the only one.  It hasn't been brought up again.  I'm sure they got her straightened right out in Oklahoma.  (wink wink)

What she had picked out were certainly beautiful and expensive, and I must say, if you've been to a quilt show lately you have probably had your breath taken away.  I have.  Quilting has come a long way.  Traditionally, beautiful and expensive does not a real quilt make, at least not to kids from the country.  A "real" quilt is not made from coordinating fabrics bought special for that purpose.  A real quilt is not machine stitched, ever. A real quilt incorporates pieces considered ugly on thier own into a beautiful whole.  A real quilt never needs to be dry cleaned.  A real quilt has weight.  At least, that's the way it used to be.   I can remember always making a "tent" over my feet, so the weight of the quilt didn't give me cramps as a child.  I still do that, actually.

Quilts were traditionally made from scraps of material for the practical purpose of providing warm bedding for your family.  Through the years it has evolved into an art form and I am awed by some of the beautiful work turned out from the luxurious position of being able to buy the material you want and the vision needed to see the end result without benefit of a map.  I have an Amish community within driving distance and they work on their quilts all the time.  You might be surprised at how much they sell for.  Consider the time that goes into them and the length of time the quilt will last, and it will seem like a bargain.  Estate sales that feature quilts are always well attended, even in terrible weather, and the quilts always go last and rarely more than one at a time.  I always see it as a testimony to effort put into those quilts, and I doubt that I'm the only one.
I grew up with quilts made from clothes that had been outgrown or ruined beyond repair.  Every square was not just part of a quilt, making beautiful larger patterns, it was also a piece of your old baby blanket or favorite dress.  Basically any kind of material that would work for a quilt was cut into pieces for exactly that.  These pieces were kept in piles, bags and chests, sometimes for many years before a quilt would be put together.  Some women could have more than one quilt going at a time, and were considered rock stars before that term was even born.


This is the newest quilt I have. It was made by my mother during her illness before her death.  It was a dream she had put off till the last minute, but she got it done with some help.  She did all the blocks herself and some friends, who were life long quilters, put it together for her.  She was very proud of it.  Since this was a dream she put off until the last minute, I have to tell you that she bought all the material to coordinate especially for that purpose.  So maybe it's not a "real" quilt in every way, but it is not a bad first effort from a woman caught between the generation that couldn't throw anything away and the generation that threw everything away.  It's a log cabin, which is one of the easier patterns.  I am beginning to suffer guilt from never making one of my own.  But I'll try it the old fashioned way.  Go ahead and shake your head, it doesn't bother me a bit.  I learned a long time ago this is strictly my own journey, and shortcuts never did appeal to me.  I also learned a long time ago that the value of a quilt has nothing whatsoever to do with it's worth.

This is the Sunflower Sue, made by Nana, that I have talked about before.  It fits the qualities of a real quilt in every way. 

So does this one.  It is over 100 years old and is a wedding ring pattern.  Each little square, you can be sure, was previously something else in another life and faded from washing before it ever became part of this quilt.  It was made by a teenage girl before her wedding and is still here all these years later.  She would have started cutting pieces for this quilt as a small child, and sewn them together, probably more than once.  You were judged by the size of your stitches then, and they were supposed to be very small.  It must be said that it has spent a significant part of those years in a plastic bag of protection in a closet, because it is over 100 years old.  But still.  You have to admit that machine stitching would have never stood up to the test of time.  When I turned 40 I decided I was going to get it out and use it.  It seemed wrong to be a beautiful quilt over 100 years old and be kept in a closet.  On the other hand, once I got it out it seemed wrong to be a beautiful quilt over 100 years old and be spending the night tangled on the floor amongst teenage boys and dogs.  But quilts have lives too, and they have to live them.  This quilt has had many lives, many of the scenes probably the same, just with different players.  Or dogs.  If it goes down, it will go down with it's boots on, so to speak.  But I imagine it will last many more years. 

Which brings me to my favorite quilt of all.  It's not the prettiest.  Or the oldest.  It is a real quilt because it is hand stitched, and made out of recycled material, but it wasn't made to be displayed or protected.   I can't wait for you to see what the material is, and you will have to be a certain age to recognize it at all.  It is my favorite quilt because it was made by Nana also, and because of the material, it is the quilt that I have never been afraid to use.  It has been to countless ballgames and parks.  It has been spread across lawns and fields to watch fireworks on.  Babies have slept on it and had their diapers leak.  Little children have thrown up on it.  It has languished in the back of a minivan for months until it was needed to cover a seat for a boy who accidentally went into the city lake fully clothed.  In FEBRUARY!  It's had grass stains and grease stains.  I've washed it hundreds of times.  It spends almost every winter in a cedar chest.   It is the one my children recognize as home, even when it's all alone and nobody is standing close to it.  I have never seen another one like it, but surely there are others around.  Check it out:

Ok, now do you remember?  In the early 70's, these were in some kind of laundry powder.  I want to say Biz Bleach, but I can't remember for sure. The theme was flowers, and the tea towels were pronounced  a bad advertising gimmick by one and all immediately after having been pulled out of the powder, where they were always buried mysteriously deep, which usually made a dusting on the floor, which had to cleaned up.  Which, did nothing to improve the mood of these women who were already disillusioned at the thought of having to get some more tea towels after all, because these would never do.  Maybe it was just that the powder wasn't any good, hence the "free" prize, but these tea towels were cussed and discussed all over America, by women who bought that washing powder.  I don't know how many of them used the tea towels or how long they lasted.

What I do know is that though those tea towels were despised by one and all, very few of them were thrown away, and at least one woman saved them up until she had enough to make a quilt out of.  It's just a twin size, so either she didn't like the brand that much or she just didn't need any more big quilts.  We will never know.  We can make stories up about it instead.

That depression-era generation knew how to turn straw into gold.  I miss them.  That's all I'm sayin'.  

After she's gone

The other day I was catching up with my cyber friend Katie, at Marriage Confessions, who is a redhead, who is expecting her daughter, Gracie, to be born soon, and they were showing the baby's room. Here is a link to the blog, I highly recommend it.
http://marriageconfessions.com/2011/02/16/bellycast-6/
This little girl has a beautiful room, freshly done and waiting for her, featuring one of the MOST gorgeous mobiles I have ever seen.  It's made of butterflies. 
I have followed this couple for a couple of years.  They got me with the first baby, "Bean", but I stayed for her honesty.  They are very brave, this couple, and very grounded.  She is clearly big and pregnant in the video, worn out, tired of even talking, and he is steadfastly videoing little details that he knows she wants you to see.  This is a good picture of them as a couple.  She does most of the talking on the blog, he takes care of the details, steadfastly and faithfully.  So sweet, and then, it happened.
She pointed to a shelf full of dolls in Gracie's nursery.  My heart stopped and I got tears in my eyes.  Her sweet young voice explained how these were dolls that had been hers growing up, and sat on a shelf in her room when she was a little girl.  I was bawling out loud by then.

You see, I have a redheaded daughter.  Having a red headed child gives you a bond with anyone who has ever had red hair in their family.  It is always the first thing remarked upon.  By the time my daughter was 3 she would lean away from hands raised to touch her hair because everyone always did, first thing.  "Don't let them touch my hair", she would discreetly request as they headed toward us, hands already outstretched.  Not only do I have a red headed daughter, but Grace is her middle name.  Is the bawling starting to make sense?  Well, in her room, since before she was born, there has been a shelf.  My mother started buying dolls for my daughter when she was born.  Only redheaded dolls.  Not expensive ones, not collector's items, just redheaded dolls, many of which have been displayed since her birth on that same shelf, where they are still sitting in her now basically abandoned room.

More than one shelf.  Note to Katie, bookshelves lining the top of her room are really handy.

I went to her room.  The dolls sit silently collecting dust and perhaps dreaming of days past us all now, like me.  Do they look forward to another little girl, like me?

I laid down on my daughter's bed, on top of the quilt my mother made, feeling my connection to the two women who are closest to me in this life.  Who always will be closest to me, in life or beyond.  Life flows through us, as women and all we are is the conduit, the vessel, the link between.  At times I find this a relief, other times it feels like the weight of the world.  Always, it is a fact.  Known.  Unquestioned.
I looked at the Sunflower Sue quilt made by my grandmother, lovingly and prominently displayed on the wall.  My Nana, mother to 2 boys and expecting her third to be her girl, made this quilt for what turned out to be my Uncle Melvin, who would be a big brother to her baby, my father.  Four boys.  So she threw the quilt up in the closet and drug it out when she really needed it, bound it in some blue she found lying around, and when I graduated from high school, I got the quilt.  (Score!!)  She laughed so hard telling me the story of her hopes for a daughter and the last-minute blue binding that she almost peed her pants.  This quilt is one my most precious possessions.  She had to wait for granddaughters, but she didn't mind.

 I thought of Katie, at one end of a tunnel, expecting to meet her daughter any day, dreaming of what it will be like to have a daughter.  I thought of me, at the other end of that same tunnel, reflecting on the reality of all those dreams I had harbored also, before I knew who my daughter really was, when she was just an idea in my head.  A hardly dared, hoped-for wish that I made every day, never out loud.

I thought of what it means to be a link in the chain.  The only thing that connects all that you are with all that you will be.  You are no more important than any other link, yet at times you are the most important because you alone carry the knowledge of who you are, where you came from, and how you got here today.  You have to be sure to make every effort to never leave your children alone spiritually.  You may not be able to keep them from being alone physically but who among us is ever really alone spiritually when God is always, always with us? 
You have to give them.......everything.  You have to make them strong enough to stand alone if necessary and stay true to themselves.  You have to somehow try to teach them to trust themselves, because they are worthy.  To love themselves.  To take pride in who they are.  They are everything up to this moment of NOW, which will only last a very little while.  When they are two you wonder if you can stand it and when it will ever end.  Then in a very short (too short) time you are wondering where the years went and if you should throw away old prom decorations which look like trash to you, but.......it might have meaning for her. 
I wondered when my daughter will finally take her room apart, what she will keep and how carefully she will pack it.  What do all these things mean to her?  Does she even know yet?  Has she ever taken the time to think about it or will that happen some day still in the future?  Will I be there?  I thought about writing down all that I know in case I'm not.  She comes from a long line of strong, smart, headstrong women.  This is her birthright and I have no doubt it will, in myriad ways, be her salvation.
Until then, this will all be here waiting for her, undisturbed:

So I closed the door to the recently abandoned room, I have now blogged the whole thing, and I try to assure Katie that it will be all right.  She will survive birth, joy, rebellion and finally abandonment.  Soon, too soon, she will be laying on Gracie's bed, crying over the shelf(ves) full of dolls and missing her baby who is now an independent woman walking around in the world with her own opinions, hopes and dreams.  And a room full of stuff that needs to be sorted into piles to throw away or pack really well, to wait for a baby to be born to inherit them.
Because in the end, children leave. 
Of course they do.  It is then your job to just be there.  Waiting.  Until they come back.
And they do come back, bringing you grandchildren.  New links, to be loved and held and told their own story, the story of them.  Who knows how that story will end?
It never ends. 
That's the beauty of it.