Violets for the Soul

Kindred Spirits is a new category on the Violets for the Soul blog where guest writers may share special moments and memories of their own. Here we welcome Dottie Logerot, a retired special education teacher and administrator who lives with her husband, Darwin, in Crosby, Texas. She and Darwin moved to Texas from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, about 10 years ago. They remain loyal and enthusiastic Louisiana State University Tigers fans, attending as many games as possible. They are members of Strawbridge United Methodist Church in Kingwood, Texas, where Dottie teaches children’s Sunday School. She enjoys volunteering as a Court Appointed Special Advocate for children in foster care and also at Humble Area Assistance Ministries. She has three grown children and two “perfect” grandsons.

By Dottie Logerot

Somewhere in the deep recesses of a guest room closet lies a quilt I made in the ninth grade. It is a crude collection of irregular squares made from the fabric I used to make clothes as I was growing up. The colors and patterns can only be described as hodgepodge: golden green floral silk next to red striped cotton, yellow paisley duck butted up against a calico of tiny red flowers on a blue background.

The red flowers on blue was my favorite fabric. One summer my family went on vacation to Astroworld. We lived in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and the thought of a trip to Houston was very exciting. My mother was worried about keeping track of me, my three sisters and my brother. She bought several yards of that blue and red material and made us matching dresses along with shirts for Daddy and my brother. That way she could find us in a crowd. I imagine we were quite the sight. I guess it worked because we all got home.

These quilt squares represent hours of hard work cutting and sewing. You see, in my family, if you wanted new clothes, you made them. My mother taught my sisters and me to sew when we were old enough to read a pattern and handle scissors. It wasn’t easy. There were more than a few tears as my mother insisted that a seam wasn’t straight and had to be ripped out. Oh, how I hated that ripper!

Zippers were their own special hell. To put in a zipper, you had to change out the foot on the machine and then sew down one side and up the other making sure to not leave a gap at the bottom. I’m left-handed, and there were far too many times that I couldn’t follow cutting instructions because the scissors felt awkward in my hands, or the thread got tangled in a knot when I tried to hand sew.

One of my favorite fabrics on this quilt is a white heavy cotton material with drawings of sailboats. I made one of my favorite dresses during high school for a debate camp in Natchitoches, Louisiana, at Northwestern State College. I remember asking my parents if I could go, and when they said OK, I was ecstatic. I was going to be on my own on a college campus.

But I needed clothes. My mother was working in an office by then. This was something new for our family because she had been a stay-at-home mom for most of my and my four siblings’ lives. Mom sent me to stay with my grandmother out in the country north of Lake Charles. Mawmaw and I planned to make three dresses including one with an empire waist using the sailboat fabric. I still remember sewing with my grandmother. I was there for a week. My grandmother was quiet and patient. We stopped only to have a cup of coffee mid-morning and to make lunch for Pawpaw. Evenings were spent hand sewing hems. Of course, there was no television, so we sat under the lamps in easy chairs in the small living room of the house that Pawpaw and his sons-in-law had built. We called it Rabbit Run. I fell asleep on the sofa watching Pawpaw read the newspaper and listening as Mawmaw washed dishes. On the floor there was a “rag rug” made from strips of fabric. I still have a piece of it, framed and hanging in a place of honor in my home.

I have fond memories of another summer spent with a sweet relative and a certain fabric. My dad’s sister, Aunt Posey, lived in Charlotte, North Carolina. I took the Greyhound bus to see her and Uncle Ray. Can you imagine putting a 13-year-old on a bus from south Louisiana to North Carolina? No, my parents weren’t crazy. Daddy drank coffee with the bus drivers at the Greyhound station across the street from his office. I’ll never forget getting off a bus in Georgia in the middle of the night and hearing the bus driver say, “Are you Buddy’s daughter?” It appears that the drivers had been chaperoning my whole trip.

The main thing I remember about that trip is that I wore a navy pleated skirt, white shirt and red flannel vest that I had made. My mother had to finish the skirt because I couldn’t make pleats. Aunt Posey and I had a grand time. One day she took me to a bank. I was wearing some shorts that my mom had made from dark blue material with large red and yellow squares. We walked in and the tellers were wearing a type of uniform. Every one of them was wearing a dress made out of the exact same material. I was horrified. My aunt tried to laugh it off, but I can still feel embarrassed thinking about standing next to my aunt who had come to the bank to get some movie money for us. I wanted to crawl into a hole and hide.

Another summer, in preparation for a new school year, I found a gold corduroy fabric with brown circles. I know it doesn’t sound very pretty, but it was. I made a long-sleeved dress and wore it to school often. Unfortunately, Betty Toliver had the same idea. Her mother made her a dress out of the same fabric. I didn’t know this until one day when we both wore our dresses. In true high school drama fashion, we both got mad. We sat as far apart from each other as we could in math class. We were not really friends to start with, and this certainly didn’t help matters. The way I recall it, we started calling each other the night before we wore our dresses. I wonder if Betty remembers this.

My mother became a quilter after my daddy died. Although she had dabbled in quilting before, she now had the time it took to plan a piece, find the fabric and make it. She bought hundreds of yards of cotton, cutting it into fat quarters and using them for whatever project her quilting group was working on. She spent hours in fabric stores matching prints and finding fabric to use as a backing. One time she and my Aunt Pat packed up their sewing machines and drove to the beach in the middle of winter to have a sewing session. What better way than sewing to spend cold days in a beach house?

I attempted to learn to quilt, but the precision sewing it takes is beyond my skills. It also takes using some math skills that are beyond me. I did make each of my three children a “quilt” made out of their college colors. They are really just two pieces of cotton stitched together with hand sewing to hold the batting in place. I think they like them. Maybe one day they will pull them out and think about all the good times and bad times – and the embarrassing times – they had in college. 

And so my homemade ugly quilt remains in the guest room closet. Every decade or so I pull it out, vowing to fix the seams and clean it up. But the truth is I won’t. It’s enough for me to sit and reminisce at the faded colors and torn seams that piece together all these stories and so many other memories – the fabrics of my life.