Category Archives: Family History

Big Sister, Little Sister Quilt

Quilt Therapy Posted on by

The t-shirt quilt I have been making is for a young woman who graduated from high school in May.  I knew this little baby since her mom first found out about being pregnant (I was the second person to know of her pregnancy).  Her mom and I worked together in a law office in 1993 and then we worked together again about five years later as I sold online advertising for her website for 11 years.  I have watched this little girl, through photos and stories from her mom, for 18 years.  The interest for me has been that this young lady’s last name is also my maiden name.  We do know she’s not a direct relative of my family’s, but at some point, we are related.

As lives move forward, family dynamics are always changing.  For better or worse does not always work out, and for the Mom of the young lady, that was definitely the case.  She has since remarried and now they have a blended family with his, hers and ours.

The graduate has a little sister who is going into the first grade this coming fall while the graduate heads off to Texas A&M University.  When I saw how much leftover fabric I had from her t-shirt quilt, I offered to make her little sister a “doll-size” quilt.  Although she does not play with dolls, she has a lovely lab as a playmate and her mom assured me that the ‘doll-size” quilt would be put to good use with her trusted doggie by her side.

Fortunately for little sister, I have no concept of SMALL.  The suggested 15″ “doll-size” quilt morphed into a 42″ square baby quilt!  I just kept cutting the leftover fabric and ended up with a quilt a bit bigger than I intended (blush).

While I’m not quite ready to reveal the final big sister t-shirt quilt, I can show you the “doll-size” little sister quilt!

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I should have the binding completed on the big sister quilt this evening, if all goes well and my MS doesn’t cause me any troubles.  Can’t wait – because I have a quilt at-the-ready for my own daughter’s birthday to finish!

Vintage Quilt Love

Quilt Therapy Posted on by

When we travel north and need a place to stay, my cousin always kindly puts us up.  I say kindly because there have been either five or six of us at her house at one time and for someone who is not used to kids around them all the time, it can be a challenge!  When she gave us a place to lay our heads on a pillow in May, she asked me to look at a quilt top she had and tell her how much it would be to finish it.  Since we were there for a funeral, finishing a quilt was the last thing on my list to do so I had my daughter put it in a bag and we brought it home with us.

I either didn’t feel well enough to deal with quilting or didn’t take the time to look at that quilt, but I pulled it out this past weekend and WOW, was I ever in for a treat!  I almost hoped my cousin had found it at a tag sale or flea market so I could buy it from her!  Unfortunately for me, but fortunately for her – she believes it is a quilt that was made by her grandma.

The fabrics are definitely of a 30’s (new fabrics that look like this are called retro) era – and as I looked at the fabrics, all I could think about was that they looked like many of the aprons my own grandmas wore.  Stunning quilt fun for this lover of quilts!

This quilt is machine stitched in a basic log cabin quilt square with about 15″ blocks and the center of the blocks being about 5″ finished and all of the strips around the center are 1/2″ finished.  It is foundation-pieced with unbleached domestic (natural muslin) on the back of the blocks.  All I need to get done is the quilting and the binding and my cousin will have a blessed family heirloom to last for many more years to come.

I felt lucky to have it, hold it and caress it, even if for a very short period of time.  Again, an absolutely beautiful quilt made with a quilter’s heart!

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More photos to come after I get the quilt back from my quilter!

Quilt Therapy?

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I reserved this domain name a number of years ago – when fabric was about $6/yd.  For those of you who have been quilting and buying quality quilt fabric, you’ll realize this has been my domain name for quite a while.  In that time, I’ve had non-quilters ask me what Quilt Therapy really was…while seasoned quilters smirk and enjoy their own forms of Quilt Therapy.

And back in those earlier days of my quilting, it was said that Quilt Therapy was less expensive than true therapy.  Right now, with the cost of fabrics, quilting, shipping – I would definitely have to say that if you are a proficient quilter, it is NOT cheaper – though, for me, it is way more satisfying!

Let’s see if I can throw out my own definition of Quilt Therapy for you.

A lovely little baby girl was born to a great set of parents, the baby’s mother I personally knew since my youngest daughter was less than one.  This little baby’s mother was my mother’s helper when I had very young children…and as she grew up and got more responsible, she was our go-to babysitter for our kids.  She took the kids to her house in the summer because I worked from home and needed some quiet time to get my work done.  She and her parents took our kids when my husband had to have an emergency appendectomy…and they took our kids in when a precious life ended far too soon and we had to fly from Utah to Texas to attend her services.  If we were going somewhere and needed an extra set of hands (like to the public swimming pool), she went with us.  She was and still is an awesome person – and we could not have been more pleased when she finally had a baby of her own.  She spent a few years of her marriage with just her husband, because her mom told me that her babysitting my four kids was the best birth control there ever was!  I think they’d been married for about five (or more) years before they had this precious new life in their hearts and in their home.

This new baby calls to me and I begin MY Quilt Therapy.  It can be a long and winding road, especially if I have to rip out a seam or two (or six), but the Quilt Therapy gives me such a blast of fresh quilted air that I enjoy every single process of making a quilt.

I am not as expedient nor able to quilt quite as much as I used to – with this multiple sclerosis, I can usually get in 15 – 30 minutes, on my feet (choosing or buying fabric, cutting, ironing, etc.) most days before my body parts start screaming for relief.  So now, when I make a quilt, I spend however many hours or days it takes to cut out the quilt pieces.  Then I rest.  Another few days and I will press all of the cut out pieces.  Then I rest.  Sitting down to piece a quilt top is pretty simple, and even more simple when it’s a baby quilt because it’s smaller than larger bed quilts.  But, there is ironing involved in that piecing process and once again, I do my piecing in daily/weekly increments so as not to be in too much pain.

So, now I have the quilt top done…however my Quilt Therapy isn’t finished yet!

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This is a photograph of the completed baby quilt top.

Once the top is done, I have to decide if I can quilt it on my domestic machine or if I want a professional quilter to use her long-arm and quilt it for me.  In this case, I decided to go with a pro (Kathryn Rister) – mostly because a baby quilt is usually used a lot and washed a lot and it needs to stand up to the test of time.

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This is a close-up of part of the quilt top quilted.

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Although it’s not easy to see, this is the professionally quilted quilt top.

Next in the Quilt Therapy process is the binding.  Then the label on the back…and sending the completed quilt to the little baby it was intended for.  Not yet!  I’m not quite done with my Quilt Therapy for this quilt.

THIS is the closure I get when I enjoy my Quilt Therapy:

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A T-Shirt Quilt in the Making for a Spencer

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I was hired by a lawyer to be his legal assistant/secretary/gopher in 1993, before my husband and I had children.  The gal who called me about the attorney’s selection of me had the last name that was my maiden name, Spencer.

On my first week of work in what was literally a broom closet converted into an office that we shared, I just *had* to ask her about her last name.  Once I found out that it was her married name, then we talked about her husband’s family.  And this information gave me goosebumps!  Her husband’s parent’s names were the EXACT first and last names of the oldest uncle and his wife on my paternal side of the family.  NO WAY!  I knew that my aunt and uncle had already passed away, so I knew it wasn’t my immediate kin.  But, then I was shocked to find out that her husband’s name was also one of my first cousin’s names.  (queue the Twilight Zone music).  We were both thunder-struck.  Though, her now ex-husband was probably kin to us somewhere down the proverbial genealogical tree – it was fun to share Spencer stories.

Then, she got pregnant and she and her husband moved to the north of Austin and she went on about her business of being a working woman, wife and expectant mother many miles away from our broom closet.  I attended a baby shower for her, just before her daughter was born in December 1994.  Unbeknownst to me, when I went to her baby shower, I was pregnant, also, and had no idea!  I had been told I had a tipped girl-part and could probably not ever get pregnant – boy did the ‘practicing’ physicians get THAT one wrong!  About a month or so before my due date, she and her baby girl came to my wedding shower.  It seemed we found ourselves together, even when we were miles and miles apart.

And our daughters just graduated from high school in May.  Our parallel journeys will continue as I believe her son is in the same grade as our second daughter, in different schools miles apart, of course.

(Another aside, without even knowing it, we both have yellow labs, too!)

Because I try to gift close family and friends with quilts when they are babies, graduates (high school or college) or weddings – I reached out to this gal and asked her if I could make her daughter a quilt for a graduation gift.  She readily accepted my offer and told me her daughter wanted a t-shirt quilt.  I was a bit leery, given that the first one I had made was not of the quality that I desired, I was willing to try again.  I did a day’s worth of research because the first one I made had stabilizer that was way too stiff for my preference.  I found a much more pliable stabilizer and had her purchase all of the necessary fabric, stabilizer and to send me the t-shirts she wanted to use in the quilt.

Yesterday, I went home from my office much earlier than usual because I just didn’t have the gumption to waste time work on the computer.  I read a couple more tutorials (because my memory is not to be trusted anymore) online about making a t-shirt quilt and then got busy cutting up the t-shirts they wanted me to use.  Once I had everything cut out, my youngest daughter helped me lay all of the shirts on our bed and I took a picture of them and sent it to my friend – just to make sure I got all of the shirts (front or back) that they had asked me to use.

While waiting for their confirmation, I began pressing the stabilizer to the t-shirt blocks and was VERY happy to note that the stabilizer was, in fact, *much* better than the previous one I’d used.  I got down to the end of the stabilizer she had purchased and still had three shirts left to press.  DRATS.  She is purchasing more and sending it to me and then I can square up the blocks and begin putting the quilt together!

I’m excited about this quilt – both from a quilter’s standpoint as well as it being gifted to a young lady I made a baby quilt for 18+ years ago.  The only problem?  The college she is going to is that one in Texas whose colors are maroon and white….and that is what the quilt fabric has all over it.  🙂

Dear Mike

Quilt Therapy Posted on by

As I sit here this day, I wonder what heaven is like.  I wonder what death is like.  I wonder how many others are using you as a guardian angel.  I even wonder how many others remember this anniversary from 1997.  And, I wonder if I’ll ever stop missing you.

On the anniversary of your death, I clearly remember what we were doing the day before you passed through to your heavenly home.  My husband and I had gone to San Marcos so he could work and so I could have my first visit with my OB/GYN as I was pregnant with child #2.  You had been in the waiting room when we had DD#1 and I wouldn’t have had it any other way – I always felt like we shared our first baby with you, especially since we talked on the phone weekly (sometimes more than once a week).  I wanted to share as much of this new pregnancy as I could with you as I knew you were not going to have kids…and just the little things regarding our first daughter brought you some of the best joy.

I called you from the campground where we were staying for the night and let you listen to the heartbeat of baby #2 – I had recorded it just for you, so you could be with us in the same way you were involved with our first child.  You laughed and said that heartbeat “sounded like a freight train”.

Little did I know that it would be the last conversation I would have with you – at least while we were both alive.

The next day was Father’s Day.  In 1976, our dad died before we could have another Father’s Day with him.  We made it back to our home in Corpus Christi and I got a frantic phone call from Trickie.  She said something had happened and your eyes rolled up in the back of your head and you were unresponsive.  She had called her mom, a nurse, before she had called me as well as 911 – but, I was the first one she called, in our family, because she knew how hurt I’d be if I didn’t hear something so awful from someone else.  A few hours later, I received a call from an aunt who had a police scanner and said she was so very sorry but you had never regained consciousness and were DOA.  I was crying and screaming and so very upset.  You were the best friend I ever had, outside of my husband.  To this day, I still don’t have a best friend that cared about me as much as you did.  Or that cared about having a sibling relationship in the manner with which you and I had.

I talk to you often, even if it’s just in prayer.  I make sure to visit with you when I have a question about our family and pray for your wisdom to help me see through the quagmire of life to find an answer to my dilemma.

I cannot say I wish we had never gotten so close because without your love and showing me how to love, I was able to find and fall in love with my husband.  We have four wonderful (most of the time, which you would definitely laugh at) kids and none of them know their Uncle Mike except through some old family photos and my stories to them.  But, those stories do not take the place of having you here.

I miss having you here.

I miss you.

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Forever your Sister, Tammy