Two New Quilts from my Mother

I went over to take my mother a piece of the coconut cake that I made Sunday...and take care of some small chores she needed done.  She had been telling me to pick out one of her handmade quilts and I had been putting it off...  You see, my mother has many handmade quilts and she has them on her spare bedroom bed...9 are laid on the bed which is then covered by the bedspread, a set of Raggedy Ann dolls and many other dolls that she has collected over time.  What I am telling you, it was going to be a major job just to get to the quilts and to remake the bed after I picked one out and got it out.

We took off all the dolls and folded back the bedspread, then I would pull one quilt back and say, Oh, I really like this one, and then the next one, "Gee, Mom, I really like this one too.  I had seen them all as she had finished them over the years but never stacked one on top of another like this.  We continued to go down to the bottom one and still I had not made up my mind so we folded this back and I went through them all again backwards this time.  Well, we did this a few more times and finally I got it between 2 quilts and mother told me to just take them both...I think she was getting tired.



I love this color and mother put many hours in doing the blocks.  This was my first pick.




Mother came home from work and hand pieced this flower garden quilt after my father died.  She had been a stay at home mother and housewife up till my dad died. She was 48 years old and she didn't know how to drive.  My Dad had a heart attack at the age of 50 and he had been in and out of the hospital his last 5 years.  Money was tight for many years.  So she started to work just a week or two after we taught her to drive and got her a car to drive.  She enjoyed working and coming home in the evening she quilted to pass the time.  She took my leftover scraps after I made the girl's dresses.  This quilt had memories for me, a sad memory of a very deep loss in my life and a mother that had to make some very brave moves to continue living without the man that had been her husband for over 30 years.  
She is now 81 years old and still a very independent woman...



She walked me to the door with my cherished quilts, and told me that she was going to go eat a piece of that coconut cake.