Quilting with Grandma Davis

Travis's mom sews for a hobby and she's a very talented seamstress and particularly likes to quilt. She took advantage of her Thanksgiving vacation to do some quilting and to teach Madalynn and Justis some sewing skills.

Cheryl brought some fun quilting flannels. She allowed Madalynn and Justis to cut some quilt pieces and then let them "cut their teeth" on the sewing machine. Cheryl brought her own machine and Madalynn and Justis sewed on one of my sewing machines, which happens to be Cheryl's late grandmother Bertha Burk's machine that was passed on to me!

Cheryl had to do some creative rotary cutting to get the pieces Madalynn and Justis sewed quilt-ready, but she worked her magic and she and Holly pieced the smaller strips together. Madalynn went with Holly, Cheryl and I to pick some flannel fabric for the back of the quilts. Cheryl got enough of Madalynn's quilt done to show the three oldest what their quilts would look like. She took them home to finish them.

Jillian also got a major treat when Grandma made her worn and torn "blankie" like new. Cheryl cut the raveling binding off of the blankie, cut along the edges of the blanket to remove the small holes near the edges, and then put a new binding on it. She didn't want to give the blankie over to Grandma to work on, but the smile she gave Cheryl when she got the blanket back "all pretty" was huge.

My favorite memory of this sewing class with Grandma was when Justis came out of the "sewing room" (school room turned sewing room) and said, "Grandma, I don't think those feeding doggie thingys are working again. He was trying to use the technical term "feed dogs." For those of you whom don't sew, the feed dogs are the zigzag-looking metal plates that move back and forth under the needle "catching" the fabric and moving it evenly through under the needle.

Cheryl, thank you so much for introducing my kids to sewing. I'm sure they will never forget quilting with Grandma!