Eighteen years ago in 1991, my dad asked each of us four kids to select a quilt pattern that we would like to have made. He said that since Grandma was no longer with us (she had passed away just over thirty years earlier) he had asked the next closest quilter to Grandma that he could find to make each of us a quilt. That person was Lydia Scott, a woman in her mid-to-late seventies at the time, who could still remember gathering with Grandma and other women to put quilts together.
For my quilt I chose this particular pattern, called "Grandma's Flower Garden", as much for its name as for its beautiful appearance. Mrs. Scott said that I was the first person ever to request that she stitch her name and date onto the finished piece. She "wrote" her first name with a pale blue-grey thread but had to finish the rest with a bright blue color. That little "flaw" makes the quilt even more personal. Yet even though her name is on it, every time I glance at "Grandma's Flower Garden" on my bed I think of Grandma.
My grandmother Frazier was a marvelous seamstress herself and could create anything without using a pattern, it seemed to me. We would visit her little white adobe house quite frequently, and her kitchen table was often covered with her sewing machine and her latest project. Before she got an electric Singer, she would let my sisters and I sit at her feet and push the foot boards on her old treadle machine.
I love being surrounded with reminders of my family -- antiques from my ancestors and personal gifts from my children and grandchildren. Each item is unique like a flower in a garden, and the fragrance of the memories they evoke make me feel warm and secure -- just like being tucked under a lovely, handmade quilt.
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