Gone Crabbing

Close up of the wording

I was looking at my pile of quilts and had a thought. I haven't featured my earlier quilts in my blog. I need to document them. Next year, I'll make the documentation more of a priority! The post today is about one of those early quilts.

Every quilt has a story. The story behind this quilt involves memories at the beach. My husband's aunt, Mar, owned a cabin at the beach in Florence, Oregon. When our girls were small, we went there several times a year. Often, my father-in-law, Bill,  joined us. More realistically, we joined them! Sometimes, Mar's sister Mary came too.

I have many fond memories of the coast house. The girls learned to play pinochle there. We had some long games. We'd start with four people playing and as someone tired, another person took the retiring person's place. A pinochle game could last from after breakfast to before dinner with a break for lunch! The game would resume after dinner and last until people went to bed. The following day, we would start a new game!

Many Labor Day weekends were spent at the coast house. We had a number of Thanksgiving dinner's there too. One of my father-in-law's fun activities to do was to go crabbing. We would set pots, motor about, then come back and pull the pots. A pot full of crab is heavy! Once we had our catch, we brought it back to the coast house and cooked the crabs on the back porch.

An early quilt gifted to my father-in-law

We would spread newspaper on the picnic table and crack crab. Later we would have crab omelettes, crab salads, crab cakes. . .well, you the picture! Some crab we each took home; some crab we gifted to the neighbors. Many hands always made light work.

The cabin was about a five minute walk from the beach so it was easy to take the girls to build sand castles, walk the dogs, look for shells and watch people fly kites. My favorite time to walk on the beach was in the morning when the wind was less likely to blow one over!

There was a radio at the coast house; but, no tv. It was a good place to visit, read a book and do some handwork. In 1999, my local quilt shop had a class to make a sampler wall hanging. The class fee included the fabrics for the project and dinner!

The sample wall hanging sign read, "Gone Fishing." I knew, I wanted it to say "Gone Crabbing." One of the part time employees hand lettered the the words for free if you finished your top. That was good incentive for me to finish the top!

It was the second class that I took of many from that shop. When I finished it, I gifted it to my father-in-law. It hung above his guest bed for many years. He appreciated the memories of the coast house and the crabbing excursions that the wall hanging represented. This one doesn't have a label. I wrote my name on the front and dated it. . .December 1999!

He's been gone for 13 years this past Thanksgiving. I still miss him.  I usually hang this quilt in September to honor all those Labor Days we spent together.