green week by susan

CRAZY QUILTS AND GRANDMA'S BUTTON BOX by Susan

My Grandma McClure, my mom's mom, besides being a hard-working farm wife, was an excellent seamstress. Two things that I remember about her was her scrap quilts and her button box. Whenever a piece of clothing had been mended and patched for the last and umpteenth time, grandma would cut all of the buttons off the garment, put the buttons in her button box to use another day. I think it was pretty rare that she went to the store and purchased buttons...she just kept using them over and over. Then whatever fabric was still useable, she would cut into scraps and sew them into these lopsided, homespun hodgepodge quilts. I can remember as a child, running my fingers over the different scraps in a quilt and thinking, "That's from my Easter dress...and that's from grandpa's work shirt...and that's from my mom's apron". Nothing ever went to waste. Grandma McClure was the consummate recycling queen. [take that Tipper...]