Country Roads

On a chilly night there is nothing more warm and comforting to crawl into bed and cover up with than a homemade cozy quilt. There is talent in creating a work of art from material, by matching colors and patterns, then stitching them all together into a quilt. What started out many years ago as practicality in making family members blankets for their beds has truly turned into a work of art creating a family keepsake in today’s quilts. It used to be quilts were made from scraps of material left over and tucked away in a box or drawer. Now trips are made to the fabric store to find just the right color of material that matches in making just the right quilt.

Back in the day there were quilting parties where friends and neighbors came together to make a quilt for a bride-to-be, or given in love as a parting gift to a neighborwho was moving away. Women’s church groups came together to do quilting on quilt tops as a fundraising project. Today, the piecing of a quilt top and the full quilting process is passed along in quilting classes and quilting workshops.

There are quilts made for newborns, for weddings, to fill the hope chests, graduations and as a gift for someone special to the quilter.

I’ve found quilting is not my calling. I did manage to make each of my granddaughters a baby quilt but that was as far as it went. My grandmother was a quilter as well as her daughter, my mother. I have several of my mother’s creations stored in a custom-made quilt display cabinet. I enjoy looking at the wonderful quilts through the cabinet’s glass front. I think of all the precious stitches and the love that created those quilts. Mother gave me a quilt that my great-grandmother had made the quilt top for. Mother had completed it. There is another quilt my grandmother completed that her mother had started. Since I was her eldest granddaughter, she passed it along to me. To me these are wonderful reminders of who created them in love. What time was spent in the making of these creations. These quilts are cherished.