A new year, another Blog, another chance to write about myself. What a great time we live in and also a great way to remember those came before us and may have, inspired or tortured us, to be what we are today! I am talking about, Fleur Ange, my mother, who died 10 years ago but is always there.
I talked, now yesterday, to the Blackstone Valley Heritage Quilt Guild in Whitinsville, Ma, on her birthday and I hope I paid homage to her eccentricities, and mine, and also her weird, and mine, views on life! Mirror mirror on the wall I am my mother after all! Yes, I seem to be and proud of it although our relationship was a little controversial!
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| A guild member using selvedges! |
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| My trunk show! |
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| Some attendees! |
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| Me in my usual garb, need another selvedge vest! |
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| More trunk show. |
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| Activities |
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| They must model those suitcases or I am done! |
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| Need to start writing family history on that Stack and Hack quilt of Halloween family that looks like mine! |
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| Me as the Slevedge Queen lookalike complete with book, a tell all! |
It is late but I always need to wind down, especially after driving 2 hour in pouring rain and fog so thick I had to drive 10 miles an hour on a a road that is 40! All that snow we had is melting.
My mother made me, I repeat, made me sew at 9 years old because my 2 much older sisters always argued about the colors and clothes she made for them from fabric my father, who sewed and brought home remnants, in an upholstery shop, scratchy! Best thing she ever did for me and also a curse. Demons make me so, sew! No Catholic guilt, no, just plain needing to do it and create. We are so lucky, as quilters, to be able to make anything out of simple cotton and other materials, and make it beautiful.
My mother was a hacker and sewer like me. Give her fabric and tell her to make something and she did, time after time. I hate patterns and so did she. My father could make a custom couch and did in a weekend! My grandmother sewed and also taught me to crochet which I still do today. A family legacy that I hope will continue through my grand children if I ever have time to teach. When I cleaned out my mothers house when she came to live with me I found a green box. I knew what what in that box as I had searched every nook and cranny of that house with my cousin and brother, Billy! It was the Fruit Kids, a McCalls pattern from the 50's, and in that box was Penny Pineapple, pin cushion, which she had made, and the rest of the fabric all cut and prepared to sew the other fruits, but my mother never finished. I sewed the pieces that she cut and it was like sitting next to her, recreating her sewing and ideas. They were made out of an old coat that I wore when I was a child and she cut it cut up when it not longer fit. We should all recycle, and I try, like that!
My mother was strange and weird and creative and eccentric and quiet and paranoid and remembered as "the Memere". My 2 sisters and I all have grand children but we are memere's not, the Memere! I hope we all remember our Memere's, Grandma, Grammie, Nana, Moma and whatever you call them as they are the reason we are here today and continue to be the special people we are or can become.
I am in the process of rearranging my sewing room, again, to be photographed for a guild, Quilters Connection in Watertown, meeting and will post pictures of that soon. I have just finished a quilt top and back for a Great American Quilt Book of 1988 pattern that will be shown during the Material Girls Quilt Show in June, 27 and 28?, for a special exhibit, made from fabrics that were given me when I "retired" as President. All members gave me a fat quarter and more, and I saved them and created a quilt called "Guilded Friends" for our next show.
Thank you for celebrating my mothers birthday with me!
Jessica
jeleger@comcast.net
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