Thursday, December 27, 2012

Then & Now


I'm currently working on a "In Memory of" Quilt.  I've never made a quilt in my entire life.  A friend of mine over at Finnish Ethnic Creations in Embarrass, MN has been doing crafts for 30 years.  When you want to learn a new one I call Deb Wiitanen.  Her classes are all hands on, 1:1, and entirely affordable.  The memory quilt I am working on is in memory of my paternal grandmother to whom I loved and miss very dearly.

When I was a little girl and my parents were busy at work and I would get sick, she would take care of me.  Or when school was out for the day I would go to her house after school until my parents were off of work to pick me up.  Then when I turned 16-years-old she fell in the middle of the night and broke her hip.  When she returned home I spent my entire Christmas vacation with her and all weekends until she was back to her old self.  I essentially became her primary care giver until a stroke took her in August of 2008.

My grandmother LOVED butterflies of all colors and varieties.  So after she passed away I started collecting fabrics with butterflies on them knowing that I wanted to create a quilt.  Well, Deb got me started on a pattern and I cut out squares of the fabrics of the butterflies.  But part of my quilt has 2x2 inch squares and I want to use this space for fabric photos of my grandma and me.  I have a few but I was hoping my dad would have a lot more.

He found a box of scrapbooks he thought was what I was looking for.  It wasn't as my dad is still a child in most of the books meaning I'm not in any of them.  But the box he found is full of the cards my grandparents received from their wedding in 1946.  I'm amazed at how small the cards are.  I even found their wedding invitation.

My grandmother also had curriculum books from when she was in school.  One in particular I'm going to have to share in an upcoming post was Home Economics from when my grandmother was in the 6th grade which was around 1929.

Life is so much different now then it was then.  My dad often says that the 1950s and 1960s were such a better time and if he could ever repeat or have life lived like a certain era those would be the times.  And I have to say I think they would be.  Interest rates were high on investing and saving your money, people didn't use credit cards nor did they quite exist yet people had the mentality that if you wanted it you had to save up for it.

I found a quote by an unknown author in an antique store this past fall that stated, "This recession won't be over till we raise a generation that knows how to live on what they've got" -author unknown
Now if everyone read this, understood this, and lived by it, life might be just a bit better and got us through the recession so we could live like they did then.

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