Snow and more quilting

"November 27, 1990:  Rain, sleet and snow.  Accumulation not too much.
November 28 - December 10, 1990:  Quilted Friendship Quilt -- long stitch."

Not much here, but the next bunch of entries bunched with these entries would have been a bunch too much.  Nice to know that rain/sleet/snow didn't keep Grandma from quilting in the days that followed, accumulation or no.

Nancy gave me some new pictures, some of which I hadn't seen before.  I had to post this one especially since it was taken in 1990, the time frame we are dealing with here.  So, this is what Aunt Irene, Dora and Aunt Helen looked like around the times I have been talking about them.

Speaking of quilts, I did a little history looking and found there is quite a body of information out there about quilts, some of which is interesting probably only to people that are REALLY into quilts.  For example, an 8th or 9th century slipper of quilted felt patched with leather was discovered on the Silk Road near the present Sino-Russian border, said slipper being currently housed in the British Museum in London.  Not sure this is something I need to store in the limited memory bank I call my brain. 

Slightly more interesting, to me anyway, is that in 16th century England, a law was passed banning fabrics from India, Persia and China because of the economic threat to the wool and silk industries.  They did open textile markets to the Scots, which resulted in western Scotland becoming a major textile exporter.  That all makes some sense.  However, sometime later just the wearing of Indian chintz was banned in England.  Not wanting to be left out, Frederick William I of Germany forbade everything -- the wearing, importing, and selling of painted or printed calico (calico being the English term for the fabric, whereas we use the word for a type of design).  It took over 30 years for Germany to decide that calicos could be printed, but still not imported.  They kept the ban on wearing foreign printed calico, however.  My limited information says nothing about why Germany felt so strongly about the issue.  I may have come to the end of my caring as well.  (Wow.  Really reaching for something to fill up a blog post here, aren't I?)