Who Taught You How to do That?

                           



Earlier today, I finished cutting squares to make a simple quilt.  I've never made a quilt before. After I cut all the squares, I got out my machine so I could sew them together into a quilt top, but bad news...The machine was broken.  Due to the frustration I always experience when dealing with this particular machine, and also because of my stubborn nature, I said to myself, Fine.  It will be completely hand-stitched.  It may take a while, but I'll just enjoy the journey.

I reconciled myself to the fact that this process was going to take some time, and accepted the fact that many afternoons would be spent putting this piece of art together.  (Quilting is an art.  Don't believe me?  Google "Gee's Bend" or "The Art Quilt Gallery, New York" and you'll see.)

As I pulled the needle through the fabric and tied the thread off, a thought occurred to me:  How do I know how to do this?  Who taught me how to do this?

And you know, I'm really not sure!

Both of my grandmothers grew up on farms.  They were from a different, slower time.  They knew the importance of taking care of what they had and making it last, and they understood that self-sufficiency wasn't a luxury to be indulged in as some sort of social experiment; it was a necessity.  Both of them knew how to sew really well and could make anything from a tablecloth to a pair of pants.  In particular, my maternal grandmother, Eleanor Boliver, was an excellent seamstress.  I once gave her a few yards of cloth to hem into a curtain.  She returned it bearing the most tight, even stitches you could imagine...and she did it all by hand.  My paternal grandmother, Rose Hatcher, had a full sized quilt frame at one time.  I can remember that when she set it up, it took up half of her very large dining room.  As a child I could hide under it and pretend it was a tent, but the rest of it was a mystery to me.  Yet, because I spent hours in their company, I observed a lot.  How to tie a thread to keep it from pulling through the cloth.  How to shuck corn.  How to boil water, store onions, grill a hot dog, whip potatoes, snap beans.  How to enjoy the pleasures of basic life itself.  Do I remember who taught me how to thread a needle or keep it from slipping straight through the cloth?  No, but it was someone who loved me enough to show me how.  And those same someones also taught me a much bigger lesson:  worthwhile things take time, and patience, and the enjoyment is sometimes just as much in the creation of it as in the end result itself.