Quilts and Trees

this season is hard and we both miss Mom every day.  I think I'm reaching a point where that isn't so overwhelming.  

About a week before Thanksgiving onwards it was a bit hard. I couldn't focus on much, short attention span, depression, etc.  On the 1st I lit the Yahrzeit candle and set about distracting myself on the computer but that wasn't working.  I kept thinking about the quilt.

Mom had a quilt in the frames (long wooden rods c-clamped on cross bars resting on saw horses) - she had it in the frames for years, she'd work a little bit on it and a little bit more but nothing steady.  I always encouraged her but it didn't seem like something she was anxious to finish. We didn't have room to set it up at that small place in North Fork.

when we go here, I insisted it get set up in good light.  She did a couple of rows.

When we lost Mom, Jackie and I just left the quilt where it was.  We had cardboard and plywood over the quilt with cover over that.  Hate to say it but it was a catch-all for things most of the time. A long narrow table of sorts, including a great place for the cats to sleep.

When Mom was in the hospital she said we'd have to roll and cover the quilt, to take it down.  I told her no, she still had a couple of days or so she could work it. She knew she didn't, she knew she was going to go faster than we'd anticipated. I don't think she knew it would be THAT fast, though.

The last few months Jackie and I discussed the quilt - leave it up like a table or roll it and wrap it up, maybe finding someone that could finish it or figure out how to finish it ourselves.  I could never get the rocking/sewing motion that Grandma and Mom had, used to drive me nuts. 

We decided to wait a couple of weeks and see if I would actually sit down and give it a go.  It was pretty certain that we'd pull the quilt down and store it. 

On December 1st I decided that it was either Do or Not Do.  I pulled the cover and plywood back, picked up Mom's needle and did a couple stitches.  I struggled but got a few inches along.  Wow, okay, let's keep going.

I could almost feel Mom and Grandma encouraging me, nudging me along until I got over a foot done.  A day later I did another foot and I am getting the rocking motion, my stitches getting smaller and more uniform and I finished one line of straight stitches.  I finished a line that Mom started.  Now I think we can finish the quilt and I might tackle quilting some of the other quilt tops that Grandma and Mom did.

Not sure who I'll teach to pass on it.  I'll have to think on that and figure something since most people do machine quilting.

I decided to decorate a little this year. A small fake tree Jackie had, her present in the gift bag, Christmas Yeti, Snoopy, Woodstock (both of whom play the Charlie Brown music - Happy Snoopy dance - Mom's favorite and ours), turtle, new nutcracker and the Rat King nutcracker.