It is really started to warm up here in Bishop. We still have wonderfully cool evening but the days are getting HOT and LONG!!
So before we are off to finding ways of staying cool, I thought I would share with you my pattern:
PATCHES OF SPRING
Although now that I think about it, there are ways even in this quilt to remind us how to spend some summer time and how to keep cool.
First Block: Clothesline
What first triggered the idea for this quilt was this wonderful swirly fabric.
When I was growing up, my mama always hung the clothes on the clothesline. That is except the “nicer” sweaters or blouses or the endless wool skirts she made us wear in September to look nice for Back To School….the hottest month of all. No, those were laid out on a blanket on the floor. We had a wringer washer and we didn’t put the “nicer” things through but everything else went through whether it wanted to or not.
I loved hanging the clothes on the clothes line at the end of our walkway in the back yard. It was quiet time, alone time. Time to think of what I would be when I grew up, or which boy I had a crush on in school, or why do I always have to hang the clothes up. I could sing out loud and not get criticized (I just knew that the Miracles needed a girl singer) and mostly I could take my time.
Really it was a reflective time, the clothes smelled clean like Tide, and we had one of those cloth hangers that held the clothespins. We had to always put the clothespins in the holder and take the holder in the house, because we had a huge Mulberry tree and any of that purple juice got on them they would stain for sure. You know, I am not sure why my mama wasn’t as worried about the clothes?
Now as a wife, a mom and a quilter… I have a washer and a dryer, but I still lay/hang those “nicer” blouses and sweaters. Those mama lessons are embedded. But I long to see my quilts on the clothesline, waving in the wind. And smelling like home.
TTFN
