ABC Friday Photo Share – Q is For

My friends over at Maple Leaf Mommy and Mom vs. the Boys have a new and fun meme that I’m taking part in.

The goal of ABC Friday is to photo share with a challenge!  Each week is a new letter theme, starting with A of course, we will work our way through the alphabet.  I’m coming on board with the letter H.  I may go back and add the other letters later on.

Just post a picture with the letter theme for that week…. A is for Auto, B is for Beach, C is for Cake….get the idea?
This is not Wordless Wednesday, feel free to share in words what the photo is all about! or not, it’s up to you!

If you want to take part in ABC Friday they ask you to link back to the host page in your post so that your readers can easily find them!   Make sure to link up your post, not your homepage!

If you leave a comment on my post, I’ll come and visit yours.  I would appreciate a direct link to your ABC Picture post with your comment.  Many thanks to those of you who already leave your link!

Q is for…..Quilt

This is my special feel good quilt.  It’s the quilt I cover up with when I don’t feel good.  It hangs on my quilt rack in my bedroom the rest of the time, but in the front of the others, so that it’s always the quilt more visible than the rest.

I machine pieced my own quilt around the time I was in late elementary or middle school.  It was eventually quilted and I love that quilt as well, but it doesn’t mean nearly as much to me.  It’s on the back of the quilt rack facing the wall.

One day, this beautiful pink quilt showed up as a surprise to me.  I had absolutely no idea that it was being made for me until it arrived.  It’s been so long ago now, that I don’t even remember the specifics.  What I do remember is that it was made with lots of care and love by my Aunt Agnes and the ladies of her quilting circle.

My dad spent a large portion of his teen years with his Uncle John and his wife, Agnes.  John was the brother of my Daddy’s mother.  My Uncle John and Aunt Agnes never had children, but with my Dad having spent so much time with them, he was somewhat like their own.  My Daddy went to work with his Uncle John in the log woods around the age of 14.

Daddy’s Uncle John died about five years before I was born.  But as far back as I can remember, Aunt Agnes was married to Mr. Hoyt.  I was probably a teen myself before I was able to put all of these puzzle pieces together.  Mr. Hoyt was our uncle, we just didn’t call him uncle.

Aunt Agnes with my parents around 1991

In the summers, my brother, sister, and I were sent to spend at least part of the summer with Aunt Agnes and Mr. Hoyt.  By that point, it was more like they were our grandparents, as both of my dad’s parents were deceased.  We attended their family get togethers, church homecomings, took part in Vacation Bible School, and so much more.  We worked the fields with them where we dug potatoes, shucked corn, picked and shelled peas, butter beans, helped can tomatoes, make jelly,  and so many other things I can’t even begin to list them all.  My Aunt Agnes made the very best fried chicken in the whole wide world and never burned hers, something I’ve never mastered when using eggs in the batter like she did.  Bless her heart, my Aunt Agnes also had the patience to teach me to make gravy from scratch.  Of course, a few of those batches were refused by the dogs.

Most nights, the meals ended with Mr. Hoyt having crackers and milk or cornbread and milk.  A few hours later, we’d have a night cap of an ice cream coke float.  The ice cream always came from the plastic buckets with handles.  TV watching was minimal, way out in the country, besides the antenna has to be redirected with the little dial in the house if you changed the channel.  The TV was easier to deal with than trying to figure out when it was your turn to answer or use the party line telephone, installed high on the wall in the hallway.

The more I thought about the quilt, the more I was flooded with thought of my Aunt Agnes.  My Aunt Agnes died in 2002, but Alzheimer’s robbed us of her years before that.  So, my quilt isn’t just pretty colored fabric to keep me warm.  My quilt blankets me with memories of love.