Doll Cradles and Quilts 1995

It didn’t start out to be like this – interesting how plans in reality change form and  become something different.

I have done quite a bit of sewing this year for two special girls in our lives and, of course, saved the scraps.

For Christmas, we are giving these girls doll cradles – the pattern was copied from a cradle given to their grandmother some 48 years ago.  It just seemed the thing to do to make quilts to go along with the beds.

What a pleasure I derived from handling the fabric again – pressing, cutting and then assembling.  I’m a fabri-holic and unashamedly so (honest confession being good for the soul).  There’s an old saying in the quilt world that the one who dies with the most fabric wins — okay, I’m in the running.

These are memory quilts, as I remember the making of each garment and the patterns I used.  The story connected to the green piece with frogs is heart-warming and I believe worth sharing.  Britnee’s grandmother saw the frog fabric and couldn’t resist buying it, as Brit’s Pap (John) periodically calls her “Rip It”.   When Britnee was two she and Pap were discussing frogs and the sounds they make and it was then that she informed Pap the frog goes “Rip-it, Rip-it.” Britnee’s Gran smocked the cute little sundress and I did the construction – just the kind of thing memories are make of.

I couldn’t resist stitching a piece of Kay’s (our deceased granddaughter, who was Britnee’s mother) dress into the doll quilts. I well remember when I made the drop-waist dress for her – she looked so pretty in the navy cotton dress –  being a brunette, with a beautiful complexion and dark brown eyes.

All this reminds me of a passage from one of my favorite books “Aunt Jane of Kentucky.”  Aunt Jane, talking about her quilts, points out a certain piece of fabric that had been in a dress of a long-ago friend and says, “Ain’t it strange that a piece of caliker’ll (calico) outlast you and me?” “Don’t it look like folks ought to hold onto their bodies as long as other folks hold onto a piece o’ the dresses they used to wear?  Strange that such things as gloves, jewels, fans and dresses can outlast a woman’s form.”

Wiping the tears aside, I cut a tiny square from perhaps the oldest scrap in the quilts and it was that of a smock Gran wore when she was pregnant with Kay – almost  31 years ago.

Then I incorporated a this-Christmas scrap I had saved from a project of Britnee’s great-aunt.  When Britnee was a baby-in arms, she and her mother lived with this aunt for several months.  Having no money to spare for books, Auntie read to this baby from the Reader’s Digest and the newspaper.  Now that times are a little better this same aunt sees to it that Brit has plenty of books to read and signs indicate she will enjoy reading for herself in another year or two.

The cradles and quilts have turned out to be not only a gift of love, but also gifts embellished with history from country living.