Quilts connect you with people!

I just read this article about stories of people, and their quilts. I loved it and have to agree, quilts do connect people.
Today was my first day back teaching at the Quilt Shop, since Dec 9th. That is well over a month, but it was important for me to take that time off and away. There was Christmas to prepare for and enjoy with my family, we had our last two kids to help get packed up and sent off to college and a trip to see family and friends. It was a great break and well needed but…I really missed the shop, my class and QUILTING!

As I saw my class fill up today, I realized this class has become so much more to me than just a few ladies coming every month to do a quilt project, these women have become my friends…good friends and I felt so blessed to be able to feel that way. Each one is different and unique. Each one has there own story to tell about life and how and why they started quilting. Each one has their own battles that they are fighting but some how, I think the connection they we all  have with each other, helps in some way. And not in just some little way… but in a very big way!  At least I know it has in my life.

How fun and important these classes have become to me, I feel blessed to be there. So thank you for each one of you, that takes the time out of your busy day, to come to my Demo classes. I hope they mean as much to you, as they do to me? It has been wonderful, and to think… just about 10 years ago, I thought there is no way I would ever be able to really quilt.  Oh what I would have been missing, or I should say WHO I would have been missing?

Good night dear friends!

The Story of Quilts

http://www.etsy.com/blog/en/2007/the-story-of-quilts/

As a history buff, my initial attraction to the craft of quilting was its history. Quilts have a rich past that has embedded itself into American history. As I learned more about it, the more I realized how deeply quilts have also embedded themselves into our personal histories as well.

For women in America, quilting began at least as early as 1750 as an opportunity for them to channel their creativity. Quilting was considered an important skill for women. Young girls were given quilting projects to help teach them to sew, such as creating small quilts for their dolls. The American Girl’s Book from 1831 recommended quilt making for girls, noting that "little girls often find amusement in making patchwork quilts for the beds of their dolls."

Quilting is a unique craft that can allow many people to work on a quilt at the same time, and many women found companionship in quilting with friends and relatives. These social Quilting Bees were opportunities for women to discuss everything from recipes, to child-rearing, to politics.

The quilts themselves became significant symbols. Quilters in the 19th century regularly created quilts as political statements, using them as raffle prizes to support various causes such as abolition, temperance and during the Civil War. Quilts were one way that women of the 19th century were given a voice in their contemporary world.

And, of course, quilts became precious family heirlooms. Quilts were traditionally made and used to mark life’s most significant experiences. Baby quilts were given to new mothers and larger quilts were given to couples when they were married, often with symbolic block patterns like a Lover’s Knot or Double Wedding Ring.

When a family relocated to a new home, friends and family members would often make a quilt as a parting gift. These friendship or album quilts, made by a group for a departing friend, were especially popular during the 1840s when there was a great surge of population moving to the western United States. The recipient of these quilts could leave with a symbolic, tangible reminder of the loved ones left behind…loved ones they probably never saw again. Margaret Seebold of Pennsylvania said, "Quilts make you think a little of the person who made it or whose dresses were in there. Maybe you don’t think of them any other time except when you see that quilt."

“Friendships are sewn...one stitch at a time.”

“Our lives are like quilts - bits and pieces, joy and sorrow, stitched with love.”

“Friends are like fabric - you can never have enough!”

Lonely Hearts Club!

And  yet while waiting in another Doctor’s office, I read this article out of the August 2011 Better Homes and Garden Magazine

It was called the Lonely Hearts Club, here is what it said…

Reason No. 872… to call your sister, volunteer, or play with your dog.

Lack of connection is unhealthy! University of Chicago research results show that persistently feeling lonely raises blood pressure, increases risk of stroke or heart attack.   ~ Sara Altshul  Healthnews

I guess the reason I liked this short article, was because I do believe that being lonely… really is unhealthy. And it doesn’t take that much to help someone from being so lonely, even if it is only a phone call, letter, email or short visit. I think every day we should try to think about someone who is particularly lonely, and see what we can do to help.

However if we are the ones that are lonely, then it is important for us to remember that being in the Lonely Hearts Club isn’t a good place to be, and we need to go out of our comfort zone and do something with or for someone else!
So go ahead, call  your sister, volunteer or …just go play with your dog. I know you will feel better if you do!
Good night dear friends!

 

“The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.”   Mother Teresa of Calcutta quotes

  “Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for.”     ~Dag Hammarskjold quotes

Embassy of Hope!

I like this story, I think it shows you that LOVE WILL ALWAYS FIND A WAY!

Enjoy and good night dear friends!

Embassy of Hope

When Mark was five years old his parents divorced. He stayed with his mother, while his father enlisted in the armed forces. As Mark grew up he occasionally had recollections of the brief time he shared with his father and longed to one day see him again, but as Mark became an adult the thoughts of his father began to subside. Mark was now more into girls, motor cycles, and partying.

After Mark graduated from college he married his high school sweetheart. A year later she gave birth to a healthy bouncing baby boy.

One day when Mark’s son was five years old and as Mark was preparing to shave his face, his son looked up at him and laughed, “Daddy you look like a clown with that whipped cream on your face.”

Mark laughed, looked into the mirror and realized how much his son looked like him at that age. Later remembered a story his mother had told him of him once telling his own father the same thing.

Mark began thinking about his own father a lot and started quizzing his mother. It had been a long time since Mark spoke of his father and his mother informed him that she had not spoken to his father in over twenty years and all her knowledge of his whereabouts ceased when Mark became eighteen.

Mark looked deep into his mother’s eyes and said, “I need to find my father.”

His mother commented that his relatives had all passed away and she had no idea where to begin searching for him but added, “Maybe, just maybe, if you contact the United States Embassy in England, they might be able to help you.”

Even though the chances seemed slim Mark was determined. He called the Embassy and the conversation went something like this.

“U.S. Embassy, how may we help you?”

“Ahh…hi, my name is Mark Sullivan and I am hoping to find my father.”

After a long pause and the ruffle of papers.. “Is this a Mr. Mark Joseph Sullivan ?”

“Yes,” Mark says anxiously.

“And you were born in Vincennes, Indiana, at the Good Samaritan Hospital on October 19, 1970?”

“Yes… yes”

“Mark, please don’t hang up.” The man makes an announcement at the embassy. “Everyone listen… I have terrific news… Lieutenant Ronald L. Sullivan’s son is on the phone… he found us!”

Without a pause Mark hears a roar of a crowd clapping, cheering, laughing, crying, and praising God.

The man returns to the telephone and says, “Mark we’re so glad you have called. Your father has been coming here in person or calling almost every single day for the past nine years, checking to see if we located you.”

The following day Mark received a phone call from his father. His father explained to him that he had been traveling to the United States every six months trying to find him. Once even went to a home where the landlord had explained that Mark and his mother had moved out just two weeks prior and left no forwarding address.

Mark and his father now see each other as often as possible.

… David Like, Florida

(This is a true story, though David changed the names and location

 

“All things are possible until they are proved impossible and even the impossible may only be so, as of now."  ~Pearl S. Buck

“Each of us has much more hidden inside us than we have had a chance to explore. Unless we create an environment that enables us to discover the limits of our potential, we will never know what we have inside of us.”
Muhammad Yunus