Context: While my friend and I were having coffee, I asked her about something that had been passed down from her family. She mentioned that although she wasn’t taught directly taught from her grandmother, she did pick up the hobby on her own.

Text:

“All of my hobbies and interests have come from family members that I never met–that died before I met them. Like, when I was younger, probably six or seven or so. I got really into sewing. I adored it, and my mom cannot sew for her life ever. But she pulled out her mom’s old, like sewing kid.

And that’s what I used growing up, too. It was really funny. So I used all of her little, all of her patterns, all of her notebooks.”

Analysis:

Although this is not a quilt, it reminded me of Witzling’s claim that creations hold pieces of ourselves. My friend and her grandmother didn’t create anything together, but she was still able to find a hobby that was attached to her. The generational gap between them didn’t separate their taste and skill in art, which I can’t help but wonder is a genetic tie if they had never met. As an alternative, I wonder whether seeing her grandmother’s art and knitting patterns might have sparked her interest as a kid, before it became something more as she grew up.