QUILT FEVER...

...Somewhere between teaching an African American Traditions course I taught for the first time this past fall at Bloomfield College. Showing students how to create their own paper quilts. And, reflecting on the end of the year, I began making a cloth quilt.... 

Took it home to Indiana with me... Worked on it crossing 11 states by train until I got there. Sewed on it at Mama's house all week while we talked and sipped tea. Took it to my sister Sue's on Christmas Eve, where I joined in on a long standing tradition with her family. Spent one day pondered design decisions with my Aunt Dale, who is in the midst of recovering from critical illness. Sewed sections and reminisced life journeys with my cousin Tarif, while we waited in the hospital, after he slipped on the ice... Later, collected fabric to add to it at Aunt Ruth's, while she and I and her daughter Jennifer (whom I had not seen since my wedding day ten years ago) talked family, work and life in general. 

Every quilt has a story to tell, mine already holds many special memories. Including all the meditation time, special quality time that sewing by hand provides me. As if I am wrapped in my own cocoon, sheltered from all pressing matters... Depositing my DNA, and pondering what relative might end up with my quilt after I am long gone.



...Aunt Dale showed me the two above quilts. They were made by my Great Great Grandmother Kathryn (Mama) Franklin... 

Visiting Mama Franklin (as we called her) was one of my early childhood memories. She died at 103 when I was seven.  The daughter of Polly Chandler, a native American woman who's family migrated from the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina on the "Trail of Tears" first to Oklahoma. Before finally moving on to Indiana settling on a reservation in Broad Ripple, outside of Indianapolis, where my family established roots. One day on that reservation a white man appeared in a covered wagon when Mama Franklin was a young girl and took her sister. They never saw her again... 

She shared stories like that with us about her life. A fiercely independent woman who loved to walk everyday. It was while trying to take herself for one of those walks after her son Uncle Bud died, that she slipped on the steps and never recovered from her injuries. Otherwise, she might be here still (smile)...

Since nothing happens by chance, I am wondering WHY, at this point in my life, I am so obsessed with finishing my quilt... Don't know? I am reconnecting with myself though, in needful ways... ♥ Glad for the gift of working with my hands. Committed this year to being, working, and living in the present. Not worrying about what was, that I can never change. Nor what is to come, which I will still have to face when it arrives anyway. I purpose to live the rest of my life (not just this year) in the moments as they come.


To all my friends, and anyone in fact, who reads this entry, may your days be filled with quality, meaning, true passions, light, freedom, courage, independence, interdependence, celebration, authenticity, acceptance, __________________, ________________, _________________, and all your own words for what will make a better happier healthier you. 

Happy New Year!

Many Blessings

Rosalind Nzinga

Product Description

The expertise of Marianne Fons and Liz Porter has expanded into a national television show, as well as the magazine For the Love of Quilting. Their book is literally the complete guide to the art of quilting with its easy-to-understand instructions and photography to guide quilters through every step of the quilting process. This revised edition is expanded to cover topics such as using computers, photo transfer, new quick-piecing techniques, stamping fabric, signing quilt blocks, creating memory quilts, and much more!

A climate mangles a rush myth.