Babies

My baby girl turned 21 last week. I thought it would be a difficult milestone for me - that it would make me feel old, or long for the days of the pitter patter of little feet. It turned out to be a day of joyful gratitude, for having three kids who have grown to be incredibly intelligent, talented and quite diverse in their approaches to life.

I was my mother's baby. An "oopsie" child, coming six years after my closest sibling. Mima had her first child at sixteen, and three more in the next three years (life in rural Cuba in the early 1950's offered little opportunity for education, so marriage and kids came early). I came along when Mima was the ripe old age of 25.

Here's Mima with our pastor's
little boy. Isn't he a cutie?

In my last post I listed some personality traits that Mima and I have in common. Thinking about my baby, and about being my mom's baby, made me remember one more: we like babies. Not that I WANT a baby, but I love to hold them, play with them ... and then give them back to their mommies.

I love baby quilts too. They're made with bright, colorful fabrics, go together pretty quickly, and are made to be used (and abused!).




When Mima first moved in more than a year and a half ago, she was still a dynamo with the scissors and sewing machine.  She was my personal assistant, cutting apart t-shirts for my T-shirt quilt business. Mima took all the leftover pieces of t-shirts and went at them - she was quite imaginative in cutting out squares and rectangles and pieceing them together into lap-size quilts.

One of Mima's t-shirt creations.

Eventually the lure of pretty fabrics took over. We bought fat quarters and packets of precuts. One project involved charm squares (for those of you who are non-quilters, those are pre-cut 5" squares of fabric that come packaged in coordinated sets). Mima pieced them together into rows.

The rows turned out ... not exactly straight.

I cut them into strips, and had Mima sew the strips end-to-end (like the Jelly Roll Race quilts)

I finished up piecing the rows together and added a border. Looks pretty good!

Lately Mima has not wanted to do much machine sewing. Instead, she's been busy making fabric yo-yos. I'll show those on my next post along with photos of more baby quilts.

Mima does not remember any of the quilts she's made ... but as long as she continues to enjoy fabrics and sewing, we'll keep making them.