Sheila's "Grandma Memory Quilt" is traveling across America this week to her home 1,200 miles away from mine. I hope it arrives safely !!!
Pieces of her grandma's clothes sewn onto 25 blocks to make a nice size throw quilt for snuggling under while watching t.v.
I saved some of the "RUSS" labeling from one of Grandma's shirts to put on Sheila's quilt since her dad's name is Russell. I also saved a piece to go on Kyle's quilt. Grandma had some surprises in the labels of her clothing.........Maxine of Hollywood was on of them!
Since Sheila has four young children I wanted to include something on the quilt for each of them. I took four pockets off Grandma's jeans and stitched each pocket to a square on the quilt.
My first thought was to find some small trinkets in Grandma's house that could go in the pockets. Maybe something that would remind the great-grand kids of their Grammy. But it was hard to find something they could relate too. My next thought was to find four small toys out of Grammy's playroom that could go in the pockets. That did not work out either. So the final idea was to find a picture of each great-grand child with their Grammy....
It should be exciting when Sheila's get the quilt in the mail and she can have each of her kids open up their own "Grammy pocket"..........
We had no luck finding a picture of just Travis with Grandma, so his picture will have to have his twin, Garrett in it as well.............
We have lots of memories to hold on to and lot of memories that took our breath away......
She loved her lipstick. For some reason that's what I've been thinking about lately. Tomorrow is pappaw's birthday and today is the one year anniversary of grandma being stolen from us. That's how it feels, like she's been stolen, taken from all of us too soon. Pappaw is lost without her. These past 12 months have been so difficult for him, but he has persevered and fought the fight every day.
She was the best. The best daughter, best sister, best wife, best mother, best mother-in-law, best grandma and the best grammy. We want her back. We know that is not possible. So we will live our lives being the best we can be so one day we will reunite with her in a place where there is no pain and there is no cancer. Maybe when I get there, I'll have her lipstick in my pocket.
Pappaw started high school when he was 14. That's when he met Patricia Ann who became his wife. She was four years younger than him. Later on into high school, he gave his school ring to his Patricia, it was too big for her finger so she threaded a ribbon through it and wore it around her neck. It was one of her closest possessions and she treasured it dearly. One day her older brother took the ring out of her bedroom and hide it from her and made her believe that she had lost it. Pappaw never could figure out why Grandma's brother would do such a mean thing. I mentioned to him that it was probably typical brother-sister behavior but he wasn't understanding why another person could hurt his girl.
Pappaw then told me the story of how he got his high school ring:
The ring cost $40 and Pappaw had to have $19 to put down as the deposit. He had $16 saved and did not know how he was going to get the other $3. He was running out of time as the deadline was approaching quickly. He thought about asking his parents but did not want to be selfish since he knew they had little money themselves. That same day his friends talked him into going ice skating at a pond near his farm. They did not have ice skates, so they would run up to the pond and then slide across it on their shoes. Pappaw's dog, Poochie was with him that day and she had run over to a pile of brush and was barking and digging at it. Pappaw went over to check out what Poochie was so excited about and he found a mink, a young brown mink. He knew that a guy in town was paying $20.00 for mink hides and he saw this as the perfect opportunity to get the money he was needing for his high school ring deposit. Possums only brought 50 cents per hide, so finding a mink was like finding a gold mine. He and his friends took that mink into town and he got $9.00 for it since the mink was not full grown. Pappaw had to share the winnings with his two friends and they each got $3. He now had the $19 that was needed to put down as the deposit for high school ring.
That was the first and only mink he saw while growing up on his family's farm. He's very thankful he got coerced into pond skating that day and that Poochie tagged along with him or he would not have gotten that ring to later give to his girl to wear around her neck with a ribbon.
I completed Katie's grandma memory quilt a couple of weeks ago and she got it last weekend. I used the same design as I used for Aaron's. It was the best way to get some big blocks and t-shirt fronts. About half of these fabrics had to have Wonder-Under to keep them flat and avoid puckering. Some of the fabrics were from clothes Grandma kept for a long time, so they were very thin and needed some stability added to them. I think I did a pretty good job of getting a good variety to make this quilt colorful and making it a "girly" version after making Aaron's a more masculine version.
I used a zigzag stitch on all the "mosaic tile" pieces that were added to this quilt top and also used a zigzag stitch to sandwich the quilt together by stitching in the ditch.
I made the binding with some white fabric scraps.........
Losing grandma to pancreatic cancer has been very difficult. We miss her so much. Below is the picture that Katie currently has as her Facebook profile. It's almost twenty years old but the feelings are still the same. Saying goodbye is hard.
Last weekend I made a trip to Aaron and Stephanie's for his birthday and surprised him with his "Grandma Quilt". Last month, Pappaw was ready for me to take some of Grandma's clothes and start making memory quilts for family members.
For Aaron's quilt I tried to keep the florals and the pinks to a minimum! Above is a block using one Grandma's t-shirts and below, the black and white is from her p.j.'s....
The middle floral in the block below is from her swim suit. This is the swim suit she wore when the grandkids were young and she would take them to the pool. For this fabric I had to use Wonder-Under to keep it in place while stitching....
She also had an old sweatshirt that her and I made when her grandkids were little. We put a tree on it out of fabric, made an apple for each grandchild and wrote the names on each apple. Above the tree we made a banner and wrote "The Apples Of My Eye". The first eight grandkids made it on the tree. We should have made another shirt to include all the grand kids and great grand kids but never got around to it... This is Aaron's apple....
Here's Aaron opening up his surprise quilt. He had no idea he was getting this......For the backing I used a mattress pad cover.
Looking at all the blocks............
Posing for a camera shot..........
Scroll down to see who I have linked to this week........
Katie, Aaron and I made a trip to Pappaw's on Thursday and came back home today. While there I went through what hand written recipes I could find of Grandma's. Above is a recipe card that grandma wrote to record her mom's (Grandma Henry)'s recipe for banana bread. I tried to find just recipes that she made often but was not very successful. I don't remember grandma making this blueberry recipe written below, but it's in her handwriting and I thought Katie might want to try it since she is a blueberry lover.....
Cornbread salad...I don't remember Grandma making this one either, but again it looked good and I want to try this one......
Grandma's recipe written out for dump cake. She made this often and we all loved it!
Grandma's hand written recipe for Mississippi Mud. She would make this often back in the 1980's.....
Grandma's recipe card for Strawberry Pie. She made this a lot in the 1980's too. I like that she had a strawberry themed recipe card!
Grandma's hand written recipe for her apple crisp. I've seen her substitute the apples for fresh pears or peaches too. In her three recipe boxes, she had about a dozen different recipes written out that did not have a title on them. Makes me think that she would just grab a piece of paper and write down the ingredients for a recipe before she would forget it.....
Below is grandma's recipe for her hot rolls. Everyone loved her rolls!
Pancreatic cancer took her away from us in January. We miss her so much....
A lot can change in the course of one year. It was one year ago from now that Katie was graduating from nursing school. Grandma and Pappaw S made it to our house after surviving running their car off the highway near Big Cabin. We rejoiced that they were not injured and we sat at our table that day laughing and retelling their story. Grandma spent time on the phone with her Geico agent getting things worked out on their car. We felt blessed that all was well. But what none of us knew at the time was that there was a deadly cancer inside grandma and it was very vengeful. Today I got an email from sister-in-law Patti where she shares a picture of grandma's headstone that DFW National Cemetery has now got put in place.
To honor my mother-in-law who lost her battle with pancreatic cancer in January, I have made two quilts for her church nursery. She was belovedly known as Teacher Pat for many, many years and at her funeral in lieu of flowers, donations were requested for the Teacher Pat Nursery Fund to purchase new items for the babies' classroom.
This picture above was taken many years ago but totally depicts Patricia in all her glory. She loved babies and teaching them about God. She taught class for so many years that after time the nursery became known as hers.....
The boy's quilt is full of jungle animals, vines and bright colors.....
The binding is in a green, brown and white stripe and I used solid brown for the backing...
The girl's quilt is more subdued in soft blues and dark browns.....
The back has panels of two different blue and brown prints......
This quilt does not have the binding on it yet. My sister-in-law, Judy wanted to help finish this one so both quilts will be in the mail tomorrow bound for Texas!!
Scroll down to see all the Linky Parties I've attached this post to.............
