My grandmothers roll over in their graves ...

Being left-handed in a right-handed world, every time I cut paper or fabric it always looked a little ragged and jagged. Many years later, when I found out about left-handed scissors it was too late, I couldn’t make the switch so I lived with cutting imperfection. I did do a lot of crafts when I was younger -- knitting, crewel, embroidery, macrame - but the only one that I still do today is finishing quilts.

My mom’s mom, Grandma Lillian was an amazing quilter. Grandma Lillian gave all her daughters, except my mom, the most beautiful finished quilts. To get her tomboy daughter (aka Mom) to learn to sew, she only gave quilt tops. These quilt tops sat at the back of the linen closet for over 20 years until I found them. I asked for a sewing machine for my birthday that year just so I could start to finish these amazing quilts.

I started by working on my childhood quilt, my room had been blue and the quilt top would have looked perfect. It’s hard to describe what it feels like to touch every inch of a quilt that had been handmade for me. I was checking to make sure all the threads were intact and fortunately very little repair was needed. My Grandma Lillian had passed by this time, but sometimes it felt like her hands were guiding me, guiding my needle and thread along the path she had laid out.

Once the top was ready, I had to teach myself how to finish a quilt. I found a book in the library that explained the process pretty well. I also made a paper mock-up so the quilt would pull through with the top and back showing and the batting in the middle. I picked out a fabric for the back to match the primary color in my quilt. Once I had the backing and the batting sized, I pinned the quilt top to both. Then I had to cut off the excess, naturally, the edges were ragged and jagged. But once I sewed the four sides, and pulled the quilt through a hole left open on one side, those imperfections were gone.

As I over-sewed the final corner by hand, tied off the thread, and cut it as close to the fabric as I could, I felt like I was almost done. But I wasn’t, the hard part was yet to come. You have to use a thick needle and have strong hands to pull the yarn through the quilt top, batting and backing, then you tie, cut the yarn to a certain length, and move to the next section. My sore hands, knees and back disappeared when it was finally done and I’m not sure if the joy I was feeling was mine or my grandma’s.

It’s taken years, but I have finished quite a few of the quilts from the linen closet and I gave a number of them to my brother when he got married. Just as I was starting to run out of quilt tops to finish I found a huge surprise when we were cleaning out my parents’ house after they passed. Tucked away in the basement was a wooden trunk, the one my dad’s mom, my Grandma Harriet, used when she emigrated from Denmark. The big surprise when we opened the trunk - quilt tops. My dad never mentioned that his mom was a quilter.

Grandma Harriet was a seamstress, milliner and tailor. Dad said his parents were walking through town and saw three hats in a store that my Grandma wanted, but together they cost more than my Grandpa made in a month. Grandpa came home one day and almost had a heart attack seeing all three sitting on the table. Grandma Harriet had duplicated them for less than a dollar’s worth of materials.

My dad said she could look at any article of clothing and copy it, she could look at you and cut the fabric to fit without a pattern. My dad said if she had lived I would have had a wardrobe that would be the envy of every kid in school. I never got to meet her, but now I get to learn more about her as I finish these quilts.

What is amazing is how different these quilt tops are from those my Grandma Lillian made. A quilt is an individual creative expression of the person who made it. And family quilts are ties to the past, to your history. Who knows, maybe one day when I retire, I might even try to make my own quilt top. And someday, if my nephew has kids, maybe one of them will finish my quilt top and learn about me. They will learn that while I inherited none of their great great grandmothers’ sewing talents, I did inherit their stubborn perseverance.