My Heart Belongs to Grandma

Today is my late paternal grandmother's birthday, so I thought I'd post a couple of photos of quilts I made using some of the doilies that she crocheted in the 1960s or so. About 20 years ago, I inherited an entire box of her handwork, but never knew what to do with them all until I saw an episode of Simply Quilts about using doilies in quilts. The guest on the show was Sharon Rexroad.

I made these in 2002 and until that time, the doilies had been hidden away in a box and never really seen by anyone. Although the idea of cutting up my grandmother's work horrified me at first, I decided that I needed to do it in order to make them into something that I would want to see on my wall. The doilies were not doing anybody any good hidden away, but now I have this quilt hanging on the wall in my foyer and I am reminded of my grandmother every day.



I made a smaller one for my cousin...

Like my maternal grandmother whom I talked about in my Aug 4th post, this grandmother also had to flee the Soviet Union with her husband and 3 young adult children after World War II. I don't have a picture of her with me handy, so here's a photo of her and my grandfather with their 3 children who survived to grow up into adults (my father is the young boy). It was probably taken around 1930.

I am fascinated by the stories that my parents and aunts tell about their childhood years growing up under Stalin's regime in the 1930s and 1940s. I cannot imagine living through what my grandmothers must have lived through -- husbands and other family members being arrested and sent to prison camps (no reason ever given, of course), property taken away, children needing to be fed on one potato a day, bombs raining down from the sky, traveling through Eastern and Central Europe by horse and wagon during the war years and not knowing where their next meal would come from or where they would sleep, starting life all over at age 50 in a foreign land not knowing the language...

Not a day goes by that I don't realize how extremely fortunate I am...Happy birthday Grandma!