Quill Cottage is hosting an “I Remember Laura” blogathon on Mondays through the month of June in memory of Laura Ingalls Wilder, author if the “Little House” series of books. Each week will focus on a particular theme: this week is quilts, week 2 will feature buttons, week 3, family recipes, and week 4, books and music. There will also be an art swap going on each week in connection with the theme: Click on the picture for more information.

I don’t remember when I was first introduced to the “Little House” series. I must have read some of them as a child because I was familiar with some of the stories, and in me early married years I bought and read the whole series and thoroughly loved them. I think I have read them more than once and probably will again.

This week’s theme is Quilting Memories, and participants can be found here. I appreciate that in Laura’s time girls were taught needle arts at an early age, and I wish that trend continued. It was a necessity then: there were no Wal-Marts in which to but inexpensive bedding. But besides the necessity, it was a way to teach industriousness, neatness, and even math skills. Years ago I read a quote from an unnamed pioneer woman that went something like, “I make my quilts warm to keep my family from freezing.  I make them beautiful to keep my heart from breaking.” That resonated with me. We can kind of romanticize pioneer life in our minds, but it had to be bleak at times, starting completely from scratch, knowing you had to focus on the essentials first before beautifying (we went through this with our fixer-upper of a first house. It got discouraging having to deal with the roof and electricity and hot water heaters before ever getting to painting, wallpapering, and decorating. I can imagine this feeling was multiplied in pioneer days). There would have been the hope and excitement of what was to come, but there had to have been long, tiring, bleak days along the way, especially during the winter. So quilts and other needle arts were also a way to beautify the home and exercise creativity.

I am afraid I don’t come from a family of crafters, much less quilters. I took one adult ed. class in quilting but never really went on with it from there. I love and admire quilting, though: I remember going to one quilt show and just being in awe of the detail, creativity, and work involved.

Besides looking “homey,” quilts are also a great way to incorporate a color scheme into a room. That is what I had in mind with this store-bought quilt from Wal-Mart several years ago. Our bedroom in our previous home had pink, blue, and green wallpaper which the previous owner had installed. Those colors are my favorites, and all the wall decorations and such we collected during that time were in those colors. When we moved and I needed to replace our bedspread anyway, I could find bedding in several different combinations of two of those colors, but not all three in any one set, until I found this quilt.

I just realized that one of the pillow shams is missing in this picture. 😳 For some reason my husband’s came apart and we’ve just been using regular pillow cases.

And even though this isn’t quilted, this is a bedspread crocheted my my great Aunt Dot: it is the only thing like it I have passed down from family:

And even though this isn’t part of the theme this week, another of the needle arts Laura and her sister Mary had to work on were samplers. In our early married years my decorating preferences leaned toward the early American style (possibly even as a result of reading Laura’s books, I cant remember), and it was in that time frame that I started this sampler.

Back to quilting: the only other items I own that relate to quilting are a pillow I did in that one class I mentioned, which I don’t think I have any more, and these Paula Vaughn prints my husband bought for me years ago.

It’s hard to tell from this photo, but each print focuses on one aspect of needle arts. The third one features a quilt.

I have always wanted to make a quilt like this one, but I honestly don’t know if I have the skills. 🙂 Quilting tends to be more exact than a lot of other crafts I do.

Quilts are prominent in many of Paula’s designs, and this combines quilts and cross stitch in this gift my sister made for me several years ago.