This thing called My Life Quilt

Life Quilt Block #1
Originally uploaded by lasassone

Sometime ago I decided I wanted to make an old traditional redwork coverlet similar to those made in the early days of redwork embroidery history. As I thought about it, two ideas started to take shape in my mind. One, which I have now started, is composed of images that remind me of happenings in my life from birth on. This series of blocks will be all done in red. Some will be images I've collected over the years from internet site, some will be made from pictures that I find and others will be taken directly from photos from our family's albums.

The second idea, by the way, was to do my favorite vintage designs in colored embroidery stitches. I'm still collecting designs for this idea and perhaps I'll start the blocks after I have a good start on My Life Quilt.

I began calling this planned coverlet "My Life Quilt," but as I am thinking and stitching the designs, it might also be called "Sweet Memories". As I began choosing designs and stitching, the memories from my childhood began flooding back.

The other day when I emailed my older and only brother asking about the dog we had before we moved into the city, I asked some questions of him which prompted memories for both of us. After emailing back and forth all day, he asked me "You ARE writing all this down, aren't you?" In years past I think he had great ambitions of writing our family's story, but evidently that chore has fallen to me but it will be from MY perspective, not his.

Each of my redwork blocks will have a story behind it and I gather them into some kind of book or booklet that will accompany the finished quilt. I am not doing the blocks in any particular order, so they will be re-numbered when I get closer to finishing.

Life Quilt Block #1: When we moved into the city from our home in the country, I was only 4 years old and very shy from having never had any neighbor friends where I had lived before. I only had one friend who was the daughter of someone who worked for my father in his Jewelry store in time. Our mothers became friends and we often did things together. We are still friends today at age 66.

But I digress. When we moved into our wonderful house (which will become a block of it's own) there were a lot of neighbor kids and I watched them playing games together. They all knew how to jump rope but I did not. It was a struggle to learn with a bit of clothesline rope that was left over from when Dad strung the clothes poles for Mum with new rope. Throw it over my head to the ground, step over it and throw it again. I don't recall how long it took me to actually JUMP rope, but what a great feeling of accomplishment when I did. And, of course ahead of me lay learning all the wonderful rhymes and another challenge of learning to use a longer rope and group jump! I kept that short rope for many years through many moves. I even brought it with me when I was 10 and we moved to California where I could jump rope pretty much 12 months of the year because of there being no snow!