Quilting
In the 'Have You Ever' meme, mrsquizzical asked about me piecing a quilt.
Before I was old enough to go to school, my mom worked so I stayed with my grandmother instead of going to preschool. Grandmother lived next door to us, and she was big on not letting TV rot your brain, so as a three year old, I learned to read, write, and generally entertain myself. I particularly liked gluing stuff to other stuff - this was hours of entertainment. Grandmother never seemed to care what I ruined, as long as I was having fun doing it.
I also spent a lot of time with her while she did her errands and hobbies. We went to church, to the bank (they always gave me free candy through the drive-thru window, I remember them fondly. Plus you had to drive through the middle of a building to do it, which was inherently cool), to deliver meals on wheels. And she had a quilting circle. She would give me a pattern piece and tell me how many she wanted, and I would diligently pin and cut and count til I had the right number. Then she showed me how to thread the needles and tie knots, and I would sew pieces together and give them to her, and she would put them in the right place in her squares.
And then once a week, she would set up a big quilting loom in her basement, and all her quilting friends would come over. I helped sometimes, but I was too little for most of it. I remember clearly though, lying on my back under the table and watching all their needles going in and out in tiny delicate stitches as they put everything together. I have one of her quilts, a wedding quilt, that I plan to hang on a wall in my guest room one day soon.
So it's not exactly the same as putting one together on my own, but I figured it was close enough to count, and it gave me the skills to make this, which I did over the weekend:
Before I was old enough to go to school, my mom worked so I stayed with my grandmother instead of going to preschool. Grandmother lived next door to us, and she was big on not letting TV rot your brain, so as a three year old, I learned to read, write, and generally entertain myself. I particularly liked gluing stuff to other stuff - this was hours of entertainment. Grandmother never seemed to care what I ruined, as long as I was having fun doing it.
I also spent a lot of time with her while she did her errands and hobbies. We went to church, to the bank (they always gave me free candy through the drive-thru window, I remember them fondly. Plus you had to drive through the middle of a building to do it, which was inherently cool), to deliver meals on wheels. And she had a quilting circle. She would give me a pattern piece and tell me how many she wanted, and I would diligently pin and cut and count til I had the right number. Then she showed me how to thread the needles and tie knots, and I would sew pieces together and give them to her, and she would put them in the right place in her squares.
And then once a week, she would set up a big quilting loom in her basement, and all her quilting friends would come over. I helped sometimes, but I was too little for most of it. I remember clearly though, lying on my back under the table and watching all their needles going in and out in tiny delicate stitches as they put everything together. I have one of her quilts, a wedding quilt, that I plan to hang on a wall in my guest room one day soon.
So it's not exactly the same as putting one together on my own, but I figured it was close enough to count, and it gave me the skills to make this, which I did over the weekend: