My Visit in Rhode Island

 

I am so thrilled to be visiting my sweet Uncle and many cousins in Rhode Island. The one and only time I was here before I was ten years old. My mom (81) and my uncle (87) have always been great friends, even though they have lived so far apart. We are having a wonderful visit!

Their mother, my grandmother, was one of the most prolific quilters ever. I wish I knew how many quilts she made in her lifetime, my guess would be in the hundreds. All pieced and quilted by hand, with beautiful stitching. I have her frames and her cotton cards, which she used to prepare the cotton batting for her quilts. She had picked the cotton herself and after dinner every night she would pick the seeds out of the cotton and card or batt the cotton for her quilts. She rarely had the money for fabric so many of her quilts were made from flour sacks and scraps, but she had a wonderful sense of color and made beautiful quilts.

The quilt pictured below is on my uncle’s bed, and I just love it. When my grandmother died, she had enough quilts that each of her 6 living children received five brand new quilts. She had always given the grandkids quilts when we each got married, so the 30 that she had stored was just a drop in the bucket. She was my hero!