| As a southern girl, sewing was a rite of passage. You | | | | elbow.I am convinced that if today's youth were taught |
| never questioned if you should learn, it was a matter | | | | to occupy their hands with more than buttons on a |
| of when. Though I possess the skill, it was rarely put to | | | | video game, they would learn patience, pride, and |
| use. One day, while shopping for a quilt, I went back to | | | | develop confidence. And just maybe, we would have |
| my roots.Searching for a quilt with an ethnic feel, I went | | | | fewer troubled youth today. As Grandma used to say, |
| to several department stores. I found nothing that | | | | "Idle hands beget the devil's work."At nine, you don't |
| appealed to my sense of color, style and culture - | | | | relate to that sentiment. But as I designed, cut, and |
| nothing that spoke to my soul. So, I gave up, went to | | | | sewed, the hours zoomed by. I felt as if I was lost in a |
| an African fabric store, selected fabrics, and made my | | | | good book, only I decided the characters, the plot, the |
| own.As a child in rural Alabama, this routine restored | | | | ending.Now that Zola (my sewing machine) has |
| memories of the first quilt I ever made. I was nine and | | | | unleashed her magical powers, she refuses to occupy |
| in fourth grade. Around this time, my grandmother | | | | her once familiar place in the bottom of my old college |
| made a quilt for each of her grandchildren as a | | | | trunk. She sits atop her new surroundings proudly, |
| Christmas gift. Now, my nephew of nine sleeps on that | | | | beckoning me, as if to admonish my idle hands.There |
| same quilt. Tattered and re-stitched in several places, it | | | | are days when I tell Zola to leave me alone, but in no |
| remains a familial favorite.While making my most | | | | time at all the fabrics in all their fanciful colors and |
| recent quilt, I rediscovered that quilting is more than | | | | patterns beckon, and we are one again, creating in |
| sewing, it's a bond from generation to generation. | | | | unison, literally sewing the seeds of our destiny.This |
| Wrapped in my grandmother's gift, I feel her presence. | | | | article courtesy of |
| Hair askew, laughing in her lap, I'm nine again, with all its | | | | You may freely reprint this article on your website or |
| incumbent joys.Cutting and stitching, there is a powerful | | | | in |
| rebirthing of a time gone by - the smell of honeysuckle | | | | your newsletter provided this courtesy notice and the |
| on a fence, the clang of cow bells heard from the field, | | | | author |
| watermelon juice circling the curve of a sticky, ashy | | | | name and URL remain intact. |