Aunt Janie

Someone asked me the other day, where did I learn to quilt? The answer isn't simple. I did not learn to quilt from my mother or grandmother. My mother taught me to embroider at age five. (Something I still love). She tried to teach me to crochet but I did not have the manual dexterity to work the crochet hook. But quilting was all my own

When I started there were few books about quilting. I thought you needed a pattern.  I got my first real pattern from Aunt Janie. We went to visit her one day, she was piecing a quilt. The only paper she had was old grocery bags. I traced her templates  onto that grocery bag. She even gave me a sample block! I was in heaven!

I never made a quilt from any of the patterns she shared with me that day, but I remember many of the details very fondly.