Christmas Lights

I recently learned that the tradition of putting lights--candles actually--on Christmas trees began in the middle of the 17th century in Germany. The candles were attached to the ends of tree branches with wax and since this was before the invention of electricity, people didn't usually put up their trees until December 24 because of the risk of fire. Did you know that the very first Christmas tree with electric lights (the size of walnuts!) was lit in 1882 by the vice president of the Edison Electric Light Company at his home in New York? 

In 1895, President Grover Cleveland proudly sponsored the first electrically lit Christmas tree in the White House, featuring more than a hundred multicolored lights. By 1900, stores began stringing up Christmas lights behind their windows to attract customers. It wasn't until the 1930s that electric Christmas lights became a popular tradition for Americans to use in decorating. Now it's almost become something of an art form in our society.

Last week we went into the city for dinner and drove past a neighborhood on the north side of Chicago where the houses are lavishly decorated with Christmas lights. We used to take the kids there every year when they were young, play Christmas music in the car and oooh and aaahh over all the displays. This year the kids were busy, but we decided to take a side trip on the way home and drive through the area anyway, for old times' sake. You could tell we were in a recession--there were fewer houses with lights and the ones that did have them were a little less elaborate than usual. But it brought back a lot of memories and reminded me of how much I loved Christmas lights growing up.

The treehouse below contained moving elves, snowmen and Mr & Mrs Santa, waving

Nothing like Christmas lights to really get you into the spirit of things.

That thing on the right is a revolving carousel with reindeer.

Keep in mind I was in a moving car. . . .

We have a few lights at our house--not a lot and not lavish, but I'm pretty grateful I was able to convince my husband to put  up any at all, LOL. They're for the kids, you know . . . .

Helps get my daughter into the mood to do some baking!

Have a deLIGHTful Christmas!

Christmas Memories

I love Christmas. I love the craziness, the shopping, the decorating, the cooking, and most of all the snow if we're lucky. When I was a little kid I knew that, once it began to snow, Christmas couldn't be too far away, and I haven't forgotten. I probably wouldn't be able to live in a warm climate all year round.  I have some wonderful memories of Christmases when I was growing up in Chicago. Back then there were no sold out, hard-to-find toys. More likely than not it was just hard to find the money for the toys we wanted. But I almost always got the stuff I put on my list for Santa.

I shopped a little yesterday and when I shop for presents for my kids I always get nostalgic. They're way too old for toys now, except for the expensive electronic kind, and I miss the days of buying them that one special toy that would make their eyes light up on Christmas morning.

Just about every year when I was growing up there was a doll under the tree for me at Christmas. My mom always knew exactly what I wanted and now I know she probably worked hard to be able to afford them. She loved Christmas and I think she probably loved dolls too. The most memorable ones: Tiny Tears, Miss Revlon, Ginny, Shirley Temple, Chatty Cathy, Patty Playpal and, of course, who can forget Barbie and all of her exquisite outfits and accessories? Oh, the magic of Christmas.

Chatty Cathy and Barbie are the only ones that are left. They both still look pretty good for 50.

I tried to do the same for my kids when they were young. I hoped that the dolls I bought for my daughter would create some of the same magic as mine did  for me when I was growing up. The American Girl dolls came close but it didn't take me long to figure out that nothing could ever really compete with puppies. It became obvious that, for her, stuffed dogs were the only toys that created magic. And then real puppies. For my son it was dinosaurs, trains (can you say Thomas?) and Legos--the more the merrier. Later, as a teenager, money always seemed to do the trick.

Our first dog, Bailey, an Old English Sheepdog

 

Nope, he didn't spend it on a haircut . . .  .

In addition to the dolls, one year I got a pastel painted metal doll cradle that I loved for my baby dolls and then "Chatty Cathy." I can't remember what I used for a blanket, but I do know it wasn't a doll quilt. When I graduated to Barbies, one year one of my sisters bought me a little pink frilly canopied Barbie bed with a matching pink satin blanket and pillow for Christmas. My sister Audrey was more than a few years older than me (so she should have known better) and too old to play with dolls herself, but she was so excited and so in love with that little bed that a week before Christmas she couldn't contain herself any longer and took me into her closet where it was hidden, unwrapped. She let me look in the box and then let me play with it for a few minutes every day after that while my mom was at work. Shhh, don't tell Mom! Boy, did I have to act surprised when I opened presents that Christmas! Much, much later, when I grew up, I loved going into quilt shops and was always drawn to the little antique doll beds displayed with little quilts. Then my daughter was born, and yippee--all of a sudden I had permission to play with dolls and doll beds again.

You gotta love Hallmark for bringing many of our childhood dreams back to life.

I read a blog where this woman said that when she was little she wanted a Chatty Cathy doll for Christmas SO BAD but her mom said it was too expensive and, besides, she was ten--too old to play with dolls--and so she never got it. Then she grew up and along came EBAY. She bought her first doll from her childhood a few years ago and said now she has FIVE! Wonder if her mom is still alive and what she thinks, LOL.

Some other Christmas memories:

• The year we had a silver aluminum tree with shiny blue ornaments
• Bubble Lights
• Going through the Sears Christmas catalog over and over again, picking out toys. Didn't they call it the Wish Book?
• Driving around to see the houses with lights on Candy Cane Lane
• Taking the "L" downtown to see the Christmas window decorations at the old Marshall Field's store on State Street in Chicago, invariably on the coldest night of the year
• Taking my kids to see the same windows many years later, standing in line for over an hour to see Santa and then another hour waiting to have lunch at the Walnut Room under the giant 3-story Christmas Tree in Marshall Field's. My daughter Caitlin screaming and crying at finally seeing Santa up close (those were not happy tears)
• Alvin and the Chipmunks the FIRST time around
• Glass Wax Christmas stencil pictures my mom painted on the windows
• The Andy Williams Christmas Show
• Metal roller skates (with a key you wore around your neck, remember?). They were so heavy you could almost kill a kid if you weren't careful swinging them around. Who needed a Red Ryder BB gun to shoot your eye out when you had those things?

This year I vowed to cut back on excess--overspending for one--and also on spending excessive time stressed out about cooking, cleaning, decorating. That means less cooking, more takeout or quick meals sometimes, to make it easier to enjoy my kids while they're home and out of school and also to have time to share and visit with friends and family--what Christmas should be all about anyway. And just in case you need any reminders about the  true meaning of Christmas, I love how Linus explained it to Charlie Brown in  "A Charlie Brown Christmas:"

"And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people . . .  "

Merry Christmas!  

Prairie Children Challenge

My yahoo group, SmallQuiltTalk, is doing a Winter doll quilt challenge, after the holidays, choosing quilt patterns from my 2nd book, Prairie Children & Their Quilts. This is going to be fun, I think. And if I hadn't already made all the quilts and quite a few duplicates, I'd join in too! I'm excited to see how some of the quilts turn out. Based on the other challenges we've done, every quilt is likely to be unique because each quilter uses the challenge to make the quilt "her own."

The book was inspired by children's diaries from the 19th century written on or about the trail west and is full of doll quilts made from traditional patterns using blocks that were popular at that time.

Pioneers traveled in covered wagons called Prairie Schooners, large wagons with canvas and frames covering them. The wagons were what the families called home for months. Everything a family needed was carried in these wagons—food, pots and pans, bedding for an entire family. Clothing was placed in trunks and breakables were wrapped in quilts for safeguarding.

 

Since examples of doll quilts from the 1800s are rare, the quilts were made using my "creative imagination." I wondered what kinds of little quilts some of these little girls may have made and used reproduction fabrics to create designs from blocks like Broken Dishes, Log Cabin and Little Red Schoolhouse.

Schoolgirl Sampler

 

Doll quilts were made by young girls as practice for later sewing skills. When weather did not permit travel, women and girls whiled away the time in the wagons using up scraps from worn dresses and shirts to sew quilts.

Friendship Star

I love basket quilts and when I saw a photo of a large indigo and chrome yellow basket quilt in a book on antique quilts, I knew I had to make my own really simple little one using those same colors.

One of my favorite quilts from the book is this quirky little African-American doll quilt. African-American quilts from the nineteenth century were noted for their eclectic style, bright colors and asymmetrical pieces, obviously influenced by African design traditions. I had so much fun poking through my scraps to make this quilt and eventually made 4 of them! It was definitely a creative experience that pushed me beyond my usual "comfortable" designs to make a quilt unlike any other I've ever made. It's 15"  x  15".

My son was reading Beloved  in high school English at the time (Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel based on the impact of slavery and the emancipation of slaves on individual black people) and seeing the impact the book had on him and talking about it with him was what made me want to include this quilt in the book.

 

Two of the most common items young girls brought with them on the trip west were their dolls and diaries. Dolls were among a young girl's most cherished possessions and were probably chosen for the comfort they provided on the long journey and when faced with sadness at leaving behind their homes and cherished friends.

 

My kids really inspired me when I was writing this book. Here's a picture of my very own "prairie children" peeking out from a log cabin at a historical prairie settlement one summer quite a few years ago. They're much older now but it's still one of my favorite photos of the two of them together.

 I love the back of this book almost as much as the front cover!

An Abundance of Doll Quilts

I've always known that I had an abundance of fabric, no secret. But quilts? I've never really felt I had made very many since I haven't been quilting for very long. I look at what some quilters have accomplished and the number of quilts made and I'm amazed. When I lecture to quilt guilds, I bring many of my little quilts with me for show & tell. As I was packing them into suitcases for a couple of lectures last month, I realized I needed TWO suitcases to hold them all, so I scaled back and packed only enough to fill one suitcase. Then it hit me--exactly how many darn little quilts have I made in the last few years?? I never actually counted.

There are patterns for 32 little quilts in my three published books (plus 8 that are almost finished for the new book--40). If you count the copies of some of these quilts I've made for trunk shows over the years, that brings it up to about 60.

Then there are the quilts I've made just for fun or for friends--at least 10--plus small quilts for the challenges on my yahoo group (SmallQuiltTalk) and for a couple of magazines or published in places outside of my books.

I also can't forget the little quilts I made before I began designing patterns (although sometimes I'd like to, LOL. Don't look too closely)--there are about 15 of those. Grand total? I've made over 90!!  Wow, that's a lot of doll quilts. I can hardly believe it's that many. Except for a few, they're all hand quilted, too.

Counting them made me feel better--sometimes I really don't feel as prolific as I'd like about cranking out new patterns. I'm always getting asked what's next, what's next? I'd love to put up a few new patterns every month on my website but, ahhh, life gets in the way. I have TONS of ideas, just not enough time or hands to get them all done.

So I guess I have been a "little" busy. Doll quilts count just as much as large quilts, right? In the years since I first began making them, quilters have become crazy for doll quilts and it seems like everybody has one or two or three in the works these days. How many little quilts are YOU making now? Don't worry, it's not a contest. I'm just wondering if others out there are as addicted as I am. Count 'em and you'll see. You just might surprise yourself.