I Remember Laura Blog-a-thon

"There were all the small buttons to sew firmly on, and the buttonholes to be made."

Little Town on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Working In Town ~ Chapter 5

JUNE 9 - 15(photo source)
Week two will be featuring buttons. Laura, who disliked sewing once held a job making button holes to earn money to send her sister Mary to a college for the blind. You can link up and share your button collections, button identification and care, as well as button stories. Did you have a favorite dress with special buttons? Did you play in your grandmothers button box? Tell us about your button tales! Click here for information and to link at the host site, Quill Cottage.

"Button, button, who has the button" is a favorite game in my family. Growing up, we would often play this game after Monday night's Family Home Evening. One person hides a button between his/her hands and then goes around to each member of the family in order, sliding their hand between the other's hands while repeating "Button, button, who has the button," and slyly dropping the button in one of the outstretched hands. The trick is for someone to guess who is holding the button after completion of the line. That person becomes "it" or the first to get refreshments if it was time to end. My children enjoy it as much or more than my sister and I did as children!

Going through my mother's button box was a trip through memory lane because she always had cute buttons from clothing we had outgrown. She would take the buttons off before discarding the item. However, she also had a number of buttons from a grab bag she bought once, thinking they might be useful.

I have a collection of buttons that are exactly the same except for differing sizes and colors that I bought for my children to play sorting games with when they were small.

One of my favorite stories about buttons actually takes place in the book Caddie Woodlawn where her cousin comes to visit. This country is quite citified and Caddie longs to take her down a peg or two. One day, when she is wearing a dress with an unheard of number of buttons (I don't remember how many) and bragging about them, they take her out to feed the sheep. The sheep crowd up to her and eat all her buttons. I still love that story and remorse Caddie feels. Is there a child alive who doesn't feel this way at some time in their life?

"I Remember Laura" Blog-a-thon

"On Sundays Mary and Laura must not run or shout or be noisy in their play. Mary could not sew on her nine-patch quilt, and Laura could not knit on the tiny mittens she was making for Baby Carrie. They might look quietly at their paper dolls, but they must not make anything new for them. They were not allowed to sew on doll clothes, even with pins."

~Little House in the Big Woods, Chapter 5, Sundays~

~Laura Ingalls Wilder~

Welcome to week one of the "I Remember Laura" Blog-a-thon! This weeks theme is Quilted Memories. Laura and her sister, Mary, were started in the needle arts at a very young age. They learned to sew, quilt, knit, and stitch samplers. A simple quilt pattern they first learned to make was a pattern called the nine patch. This week we will share our own quilted memories by telling our stories and sharing pictures of our special quilts or quilt related items.

While I have never done a 9-patch quilt, I have begun a shoo-fly (and variations) quilt. We also own quilts my grandmother and Jim's grandmother made.

Here is my grandmother's quilt. As I understand it, she pieced this quilt and asked her sister-in-law Gertrude to quilt it. My grandmother's vision was very poor as she had cataracts. She was blind for the first 3 years of my father's life. When her vision finally returned, she had to wear "Coke-bottle" glasses just to see a very blurry image.



There is a story I was told about how my Grandma Ashcroft's home was always spotless. She was so concerned that she would be heavily criticized if her home was not clean that she would literally go over every inch of her living room with her hands to make sure nothing was out of place and that it was dust free. Back in those days, quilts were made out of leftover fabric from other sewing so there would have been a story behind every fabric. Unfortunately, I do not know the stories, but the care and love is obvious.

My husband's grandmother made the next quilt for him when he was married. I think it went everywhere with him! I need to repair some places where the stitching is torn, but even those are indicative of the comfort it brought him in hard times.



Do you or someone in your family quilt? Do you have a special quilt story? Then share it by linking up here. Perhaps your quilt is not hand made but special to you none the less, then share it too.