Colonial Girl

Ari visited the 1600's this week as part of Colonial Day.  She got in trouble for using her left hand to write and had to go to the stocks!  Being left-handed is of the devil, her teacher said.  Ari, Free and I can be pretty devilish.

Ari was assigned a project to do and chose to make a quilt.  Oh sure, we can make a quilt in our spare time.  I was a little bit excited, though, because my mom taught me how to quilt when I was Ari's age and it was really fun.  My mom went through a quilting phase, similar to her editing-a-cookbook phase and her needlepoint phase.  Each thing she tackled, she did it 100%.  The cookbook she edited is one of the few I still refer to, her needlepoint is beautiful and the things she quilted are timeless.  She taught me how to do nine tiny stitches to the inch, all of it hand-pieced and hand quilted because that's how the purists do it.  My mom gave me a hobby that was an outlet for my creativity all through my teen years, even though my creative bursts were only big enough for small pillows.

When I went away to college at 17, my roommates from Indiana took me to Brown County, where locals go to see the unbelievable fall leaves and avoid freshman homework.  The country-style boutiques, with their mounds and mounds of calicoes, inspired me to teach all of my roommates how to quilt, out of a nostalgic longing for home.  We all chose fabric and made nine-patch pillows.  I was fortunate to have been armed with a carefully learned and practiced skill, one that my mom had imparted to me with precision and respect for the tradition.

My poor kids will go to college armed with a vague sense of how to quickly slap pieces of fabric together and sew around them lightning-fast in order to get the job done.  They will never know how to do the blind stitch that my mom so patiently taught me because I'm always in such a hurry to finish the project at that point, that I do it myself.  Maybe if they're lucky, when autumn comes to their college town and the crisp bite in the air draws them out of their study cubicles, they will have a roommate who can teach them the right way to quilt.  Until then, we have this masterpiece:

Kenzie, I hope your baby is very, very small when he's born because this "quilt" is for him.  ;o)

Ari looked gorgeous in the outfit she finally chose.  She went through all our trek clothing, all the ballet costumes and even tried the queen costume that seems to work for most school functions.  She settled on Golda's orchestra dress, which Golda was not thrilled about.  It's an expensive dress my parents bought for me when I soloed with the Utah Youth Symphony.  It's pure '80's, but my talented friend Michelle altered it to be more current.  Golda, who still hates the dress, said, "If it can double as a colonial dress at fifth grade, how can you expect me to wear it in public?"  Well, I think it's gorgeous no matter what the setting.  So there.  Anyway, here's the process we went through to give birth to eight square inches of quilted fabric:

When Ari got out the ironing board, Ptolemy said, "Oooooh, what's that?!"  Another thing I haven't taught my kids how to do.  I think it's becoming obsolete anyway.

Of course, Freestone and Xanthe had to get in on the action too.

Xanthe was really good at sewing!  Everyone was impressed!  She even made a pillow for her friend's birthday.

Ari's friend Elise was clever enough to think of playing a violin/cello duet with Ari for her Colonial project.  They practice a couple of times and did some research on the history of "Go Tell Aunt Rhody," which, believe it or not, has a history.  The teacher thought the duet was Ari's project too, so Ari didn't get to present her quilt or the fictional back story she wrote to go with it.  After all that work!  Oh well.  We still had fun.