4-H Contest Day

4-H Contest Day was this weekend and Baby O made a very good showing indeed. The picture above won her first place. It was taken last year at Sea World in Orlando on vacation. 

She also entered a collection in that competition and also won first place. It was entitled "Stitches in Time". It was a collection of her grandmothers  and great grandmothers stitches  in bonnets, aprons, pillowcases and quilts. Not fancy work but the day to day homespun things in the life of a farm woman. Thrown in were their pictures and a biscuit bowl and butter mold and old bedside lantern. 

Along with the collection she wrote this story.

"Some people believe that the past is made up of faces and names, nothing more than dust that floats away on the winds of life as they blow forever by. Some believe that it’s nothing more than what was – not at all relevant to what is, and what shall be.

But not me.

Each time I run my hand over one of these quilts, I don’t just see fabric that someone saw fit to piece together. I don’t see rough fabric or pretty colors and swirling patterns.

I see the past, sitting in front of a fire as it crackles and snaps and sends embers of neon orange into the breeze, warming the house. I see fingers that have since blown away in the wind, carefully pushing a needle through the stiff cloth and putting time and effort and care into each and every stitch.

In these pictures, I blow the dust off of the top and look past the fact that these are simply glimpses into what used to be. I see lives, people with identities and lives and things they liked and disliked. What was that girl’s favorite color? What was that little boy’s favorite toy? Did he always do as his mother said?

These things are part of the past, and the past is not just dust. The past is the very foundation of the Earth we stand on today. Today would not have come without a little shove from yesterday, and that’s precisely why I chose a collection of ‘Stitches in Time’.

The things that sit in front of you on this table are a part of my past. These things are the foundation of my world, the things that belong to my grandmothers. It was their hands that stitched them so carefully, and their fires that warmed them.

So look. Read. Experience for yourself what it’s truly like to let the winds of eternity swirl around you, and carry you away in a storm of dust to a whole new world where the past and the present dance together as old friends.

Because the past is more than just faces and names.

It’s the reason today’s faces and names exist."

I am so proud of her and her efforts. At 14 she is such a wonderful mixture of child and young woman right now. But truly a joy everyday. That little late life surprise has truly turned into a blessing.

Blessings from the Holler

The Canned Quilter