Tuesday, February 5, 2013

My First Quilt

No pics today, just a remembrance if you please...

I remember making my first quilt with my Japanese mother. Her name was Mariko. One of her friends living in Dallas, sewed for a clothing manufacturer. Back in the 70's, it was all about the double knits. Anyway,  her friend, Suziko, would have bags and bags of knit scraps. Suziko made patchwork quilts, pillows, and such. My mother became intrigued and Suziko gave her a couple of huge bags. This lead to my first quilt.

It was simple. One square template and we would sit at the dining table, cutting our squares. I was about 9 years old at the time. The colors were bright and the patterns geometric. Once we had a big pile, she would sit at the sewing machine, and sew them together. Eventually she showed me how to operate the machine. It was an old Necchi. When my father saw us sewing together, he got excited for some reason. He immediately went down to the Singer sewing store in Wynnwood Village Shopping Center and bought a brand new Singer Golden Touch sewing machine in a pretty cabinet.

So we sewed, and we cut. Our quilts had no batting, they weren't even tied. The backing would be double knit fabric that we folded over for binding. My mother didn't know about batting, tying, quilting or binding. But the quilts were warm, and colorful. She was proud of them because we had made them together. So was I!