Conversations with Grandma, Part III

So, me and Grandma were watching Oprah and talking...

"Mama [that's what I call her], you still make jam?"
She stares at me.
"You know, the jelly, the jam... apple jelly, peach preserves, stuff like that?"
Her eyes get big and she shakes her head. "No, not lately. Been awhile since I did that."
"I want to learn how to do some canning, and I just remember you doing it. I wish I would've paid attention to how you do it. Don't you need special equipment for that."

She goes into some long CONFUSING convoluted explanation of how she used her pressure cooker to do her canning.

I was confused. And I don't care for no dayum pressure cookers. Those things blow up. And you know how scary I am in the lab. I don't need no ish going down in the kitchen.

So I changed the subject.

"Mama, I want to make a quilt."
She stares at me again.
"I've always wanted to make one, but I don't know how to get it started. You got quilts all over the place, and maybe you could teach me. Maybe we can make one together."

She leaps out of her recliner and walks away mumbling to herself.

I was sitting there thinking "What the... What the world?"

She comes back a couple of minutes later with a very old shoe box. She places it on the table, and opens it up. It contains a gazillion small square pieces of cloth material.

"Lisa, this is something I started on, but never got around to finishing."
I run my hands through what looks to be very old cloth. "And how long ago was this?"
She clasps her hands together and stares at the ceiling. "Oh, I think I cut up this material back in 1978. I just didn't get back to it. The pattern is in there somewhere."

Now that's what I needed. A pattern. I looked through the box and didn't see said "pattern". She looked through it, and found a small piece of yellow paper. She didn't mean a written pattern. She meant the paper cut-out she used for cutting out her cloth pieces.

Humph.

"Well, I want to make a quilt. And I figure that we can do it with a sewing machine."
She shakes her head. "Oh no, we can't do that."
"Yes we can," I said. "It will go much faster."
"No we can't. It wouldn't be handmade if you do it on the sewing machine. You have to stitch everything together with thread and needle."

I give her the *gas face*.

She goes on to explain.

"Lisa, we didn't make quilts for fun. We made them because we needed them. You had your pillow and your sheet. And then you made a quilt. That was your cover. And if the quilt wore out, you made a quilt and stuffed the old one inside. You had better sit down and get to stitching it up or you were going to be cold at night."

I almost asked her "Why ya'll didn't just go to the store and buy a bedspread or something?"

Then I thought better of that, and didn't ask that question. I'm sure they didn't have the money to go do such things. Better to sit down quietly and make a quilt out of old scraps of cloth.

Humph. I think I will leave the quilt thing alone. I have too much stuff going on as it is and it's going to drive me nuts to sit down and cut everything by hand AND stitch it together by hand.

I probably will think about this whenever I drive to the store to buy new sheets or a comforter set for my bed...

Thank God for Wal-Mart, Target, and Linens-and-Things...