When I was young, I often played with my mother’s Dutch Girl and Boy quilting squares. Interestingly, she didn’t make quilts, so I didn’t know where they came from.

After she passed, I ended up with these quilting squares and they sat in a drawer ignored until last year. Although my mother didn’t sew, her sister LaVaughn was known for her creative sewing and beautiful quilts so I decided to send these squares to her daughter, my cousin Betty.

Although there weren’t enough of them for a quilt, she decided to have someone make a wall hanging. She asked me if I knew their origin so it could be written on the back.

I questioned my sister who told me it was our mother’s mother, Luella Benge Clary who made these back in the 1920s. She used flour sacks cut into squares and then sewed on the colorfully dressed boys and girls in bonnets with various scraps of fabric.

Her six daughters helped her, although my mother, who hated to sew, did very little. Her sister, LaVaughn loved helping, so it is perfect that Betty has these now.

I started thinking about quilting as an art form and decided to visit the sewing store here in Renton.

The business has been on Main Street since 1942. They are a sewing machine dealership and repair place that brings customers from far away. They also have sewing and quilting classes. The colorful machines looked so modern compared to the ones I remembered.

I have hated sewing since I kept fighting those bobbins on the old black machines and suffering the wrath of my strict eighth-grade sewing teacher!

I talked to Cevin Waffle who owns the business with his wife, Shelly. He told me, “Today, quilters have the freedom to create anything they can imagine. The old rules are gone, so there are no limits to the creative process. Also, the technological advancements in the machinery with new software has expanded the opportunities for an amazing range of artistry.

“Modern sewing machines cannot only produce high-quality stitching, but they have features that provide the versatility and options for embroidery and three-dimensional designs,” he continued. “It’s only limited by the quilter’s imagination.”

Cevin started working there in the early seventies when he was in Renton High School. His wife Shelly was also employed by the company when she got out of school. They purchased the company in 1998 and have watched the industry grow and change since.

“Quilting has grown as an art field in the last 20 years,” he said. “Different quilting guilds are experimenting with unique ways to make the blocks, and there are lots of fresh ideas about fabrics and designs.”

I then met Sharon Clark who teaches quilting and told me, “Quilting to me is an expression of both beauty and intelligence.”

I told them about passing on my grandmother’s quilt squares after almost a hundred years. And although the creativity of fabric art skipped two generations in my case, my daughter creates lovely works of art through her crocheting and knitting.

And now, I too have a new appreciation for the art of quilt making, which includes a blend of tradition with modern technology.

I talked to my older sister again, and she said, “I think it’s sad, that all that work that they used to do by hand, is now done by machines.”

But I disagree and explained that I believe the creative part of quilting is still there — and growing even more because of the machines that can do the tedious work.

In fact, in spite of my experiences in eighth grade, maybe even I will sign up for one of those quilting classes!