The women in my family have always been good with crafts that involved a lot of handwork. My grandmother, Lucy Stallings Radford, made quilts. I think everybody in the family has at least one. I have two. She had this quilting frame she’d set up in one room when working on one that allowed one to work around the edges. It didn’t slow us kids down much as we were limber enough to duck and crawl under it in our ursuit of play. Grandmother also was quite proficient at macrame. I tried my hand at it with mixed results.
My mother, Elaine, and her sister, Aunt Barbara, worked in weave rooms for all their adult life, each raising a brood of kids on a small salary. They handled sets of looms that made sheets.
After retirement, they both ramped up the crocheting and knitting, making small stuffed animals they donated to the local hospital for children and elder folks who’s 
faculties had begun to slip.
Mom loved to make afghans. Not sure how many she made, but the pictures here are the last one she finished and, at eighty-two, probably her last one period, she admits. The photographs are by my stepfather, not the best I guess.
I have a sister, Jean, who’s continued the quilt-making, having gotten grandmother’s quilting frame, using it and other means to make quilts. My late sister, Linda, made her own clothes in her younger days and was quite good at cross-stitching I believe. Other members of the family I’m not as close to I really can’t address their skills.
Very nice work!
My mom was a great quilter. I didn’t end up with any of the ones she did, but I remember sleeping under them as a kid and how warm they were.
That’s really neat. As you know, my wife Barbara is a quilter – that is, she both makes quilts and quilts them, except for the large ones, which we have done by someone with a large longarm machine. I can look around this area of the house and see 7 of them, and every family member has at least one, and every baby gets on at 6 months. Making quilts is both craft and art, it takes a huge amount of time and skill to select or create a design, select and buy the fabrics, do the piecing, assemble the parts, put it together with top, batting and back, put on the binding and then quilt it. People usually have no idea of the time and expense involved, then they are shocked when they see the price on one for sale.
Funny you should mention price, Richard. When Mom does craft shows, she doesn’t sell a lot. People ooh and ah, but balk at the price. Here’s the funny part. Mama doesn’t charge much more than the material costs, but people still don’t want to pay.
The one in the pictures here youngest brother bought for one hundred dollars to give to my aunt as an anniversary gift. They turned it into a wall hanging.
Second try at this comment, I quilted for many years. Although a real journeyman quilter. I could never get over when I went to quilt shows what people expected to pay for something that took many, many hours. I gave it up when I developed arthritis in my thumbs from holding the hoop. I got about a dozen no one wants. Maybe the next generation will turn back to them.
That was mama’s problem too, Patti. No one wanted to pay for the effort and not all of the materials.
No hoops in use here, it’s all machine pieced, machine quilted, hand stitched binding. Just takes a good sewing machine. Barbara has a Bernina.