Blogger’s note: this is a post from an earlier time! I took it down on accident, so here it is back again!
“Hey, that’s my dress from fifth grade!” Scene: my sisters and I are looking over one of the many crazy quilts that our mother made during her life. Her method was simple. First, she needed the right number of cotton squares cut from old sheets. (It was important that she kept these sheets on a high shelf in her closet until she needed them, because if she left them in the hall closet, we kids would tear them up into strips so we could play field medic. Also, we always knew when we had accidentally gotten hold of a good sheet, because we had to work extra hard to tear it up.)
Anyway, she would make these squares, and then bring out her collection of scraps. These included leftovers from dresses and blouses that she made for us, and the remnants of retired clothing. In applique-ing the scraps to the squares, she subconsciously used an artist’s technique known as asymmetrical balance, something I aspire to in my own projects. When all the squares were thus covered with various colors, sizes, and shapes, she would sew them together, and add the quilt backing. After tacking the front to the back, she would embroider selected seams. It was during projects like this that I learned the feather stitch and the French knot. Each scrap had a story behind it; my fifth-grade dress, dark blue with letters of the alphabet in white; Mary’s dress for cotillion; Laura’s purple something-or-other.
So here I am, sliding on into my seventh decade, taking time off from worrying about my cat to make some quilts of my own. I haven’t tried my mother’s method yet. What I am doing now is making a great many small rectangles out of light cotton and sewing them into larger rectangles which I enjoy referring to as “summer quilts.” The idea came to me from one such quilt that my Aunt Helen gave me many years ago.
As I sew, I am listening to music from the seventies, a decade that I never really advanced beyond, musically speaking. Why would I? It’s an oddly unsettling combination of the old and the new: practicing the ancient art of quilting on an electric machine, and while listing to vintage rock-and-roll on a smart phone. It reminds me suddenly of my mother wandering about the house singing the chorus to the Eagles’ “Lyin’ Eyes,” no doubt having no idea whatsoever what it was about but loving the sound of it.
I’m told that I look like her. She taught me to sew on a foot-treadle machine and helped move my grandparents’ Victrola out of the way so my sisters and I could set up our new turntable and listen to John Denver and Glen Campbell. She was a conduit between the past and the future; perhaps I can be something of the same.
For your further edification:
Lyin’ Eyes Eagles lyrics – Bing
Great music. Don’t forget Jackson Browne and Jim Croce. And the Oak Ridge Boys!!!
I never could! My heart will forever be on fire for Elvira.
I think Mama knew what Lyin Eyes was about. She told me she really liked the line “You’ll have to eat your lunch all by yourself.”
Aha. So she recognized it as a cautionary tale.
There is a quilt upstairs on one of the beds, where Mama actually made scenes from scraps of cloth. There is one of a desert, complete with bison skull and cactus. I am pretty sure she insisted that each seam had to have embroidery around it. I remember sitting on the porch swing and embroidering around seams on a quilt she was making for me.
William loves that quilt- because it is so heavy and warm. He always took it with him on cold weather deployments. Now I digress, but… Alice as a toddler had made an easy stitch bear as a gift for him, and he put it in his pack to go with him on deployment, to remind him of her. She was not happy that the bear was to leave the house and when he wasn’t looking took it out of the pack. So on deployment he was worried because he couldn’t find the bear, but didn’t quite dare asking his fellow soldiers, “Have you seen my bear?”
I had forgotten about that quilt, must see it when I come down! I’m sure he would never have lived it down with the soldiers. 🙂
Though maybe my quote was from Already Gone. Sorry.
Yes, you are right, it was. 🙂
Don’t forget Gordon Lightfoot.
How could anyone forget him? I do recall somewhat cringily trying to play and sing “The Early Mornin’ Rain.”
Evelyn, love your stories – your growing up seems so magical, so rich!
Thank you, my friend! We had some good times.
And Alabama
Alabama?
Song of the South. Mountain Music. Christmas in Dixie
Alabama the group! I remember now.
Speaking of the victrola, one night Mama and Daddy decided to crank it up (literally) and play all the ancient records in their collection. This was after we girls had grown up and left. How did I hear about it? Because a neighbor visiting a house nearby mentioned hearing Hank Williams Sr.
Poor ol’ Calijah, he never got a kiss. . .