|
My first love of quilting began when I was a small child
in the early 1950s. I would spend Sundays at my grandparents dairy farm
outside of Graham, NC, and occasionally got to watch my grandmother Ella
Coble Wood and her sister (Aunt Suke) quilt. Grandmother Wood spent every
day running a farm and having many children and farm help to feed and
take care of. Although being very busy with the farm, she still made time
to create the most beautiful quilts. A lovely double wedding ring quilt
with pale yellow background was given to my mom and dad, Louise and Horace
Wood, because he was Ella's first child to marry. They also acquired another
one, which is just a plain muslin whole cloth quilt with only diagonal
lines quilted and a plain pink border all around. This type of quilt was
used on all the beds for warmth and warmed seven of Ella's boys and one
daughter. It is very heavy, but very warm, and needed to be with the lack
of heat in the bedrooms of the large farmhouse.
The fabrics used in the farm quilts were of feed sacks,
which the feed for the animals came in, in very lovely patterned cottons.
The women on the farm would also make their clothes from the feed sacks,
and whatever was left over, was put into the quilts. Feedsacks can still
be found today in antique stores and from collectors.
As a little girl, I would drag out the quilts to my
yard and play with my dolls on them under the large oak trees at my house
in town.
In 1982, married and with one small two year old daughter, Melanie, I
signed up for a quilting class at a local quilt store in Burlington, NC,
and learned Georgia Bonesteel's Sampler quilt from her first book, which
was just a xeroxed handmade book, and taught by Alice Lunsford, a well
known quilter and artist in the area. This was the start of a wonderful
pasttime for me.
My first completed wall quilt was an original rocking
horse design which I used in the nursery of my daughter Melanie and later
my son Andrew.
My first large quilt (1982) was a colorful navy and
red log cabin and is still used on my bed, although hidden during the
day under a bedspread, due to the wear and tear of its age. It won a "Best
in Show" ribbon in 1982 at the Alamance County Arts Festival and
went on to Winston-Salem to the Regional Competition to win another award.
I have made many lap quilts with Shooting Stars, Irish
Chains, Baby Blocks, Scotties (for my best friend, Karen), Charm Quilts,
a Drunkards Path for my cat Butterscotch, who got into a rum cake and
slept for three days (it is named Butterscotch's Rum Cakes). I use traditional
patterns mostly with the new lovely fabrics in our fabulous quilt stores.
One quilt that I cherish is made from reproduction 1930s
fabrics and is of the pattern Hole in the Barn door or Churndash, and
is in memory of my grandmother Ella Wood, because it looks so much like
something she would have made. It is all handquilted and although it took
a very long time to make, I took it on trips where I would quilt on it
while travelling and then my husband, Rusty, and I would sleep under it,
with the quilting thread and pin still attached. He laughs about not daring
to move or turn over while sleeping under it.
After Rusty returned from helping friend, Harold Kernodle,
transport his sailboat to the Bahamas to start a chartering business,
I learned of a sailing misadventure where they had encountered a storm,
so I made a quilt for him, an old traditional pattern, Storm at Sea, and
presented it to him the following Christmas morning, and he was stunned.
I had worked on it everyday, after he left for work, and he never saw
the large quilt until Christmas. It won 2nd Place in the Annual Quilters
by the Sea Quilt Show in Wilmington, NC.
I made a black and white "Tesslating Star"
quilt for my daughter, Melanie, during her late teens when only the color
black would do.
For my son, Andrew, in his teens I made a homespun colorful plaid quilt
in a pattern called "Around the Block," which he helped design.
Both of my children are talented in the art department. I say they get
it honestly.
I am teaching my son's girlfriend, Emily, to quilt,
and she is working on a lovely star quilt and I think she is getting the
"bug" and will join the quilt community.
For my brother I worked on a Block of the Month Quilt
sponsored by Thimbleberries and it is very much a homespun sampler of
various houses, trees and flowers in lovely deep country colors. It is
a very large quilt and was a Christmas gift to my brother, Joe Wood in
Burlington, and hangs in his dining room.
I am currently working on the Houses of Charlestown,
which showcases the houses around a village green and has birds and trees
created by silk ribbon embroidery.
I am also working on an original design in all rose
fabrics in memory of my mother, Louise Wood, who was the very best mom
and needle artist in the world.
I always have a quilt in the car, ready to quilt on
in a spare moment. The one in the car now is a "Grandmother's Flower
Garden" done entirely by hand, one small hexagon at a time, and will
take a very long time, but so much pleasure derived from the work.
In Wilmington, the stop lights are so long, that I can
finish an entire hexagon while waiting for the light to change. The people
behind me get real nervous, but I also finish just in time. LOL
I have two many unfinished objects to mention (UFOs),
but their time will come.
I spend my time now teaching others to quilt in local
quilt shops and quilting a lot of baby quilts as the new babies arrive
in our family.
My stepson, Tony, has just discovered the top of a Civil
War quilt which was never quilted, and we are trying to decide whether
I will finish it, very gently, or donate it to either the NC History Museum
or the Smithsonian. This has been a very exciting discovery.
Quilting has been a very important part of my life and
I try to create quilts to represent different periods in my life and special
turning points.
<previous | next>
|