Meet the Twins - Up Close and Personal - Part 1

Wow. With Becky out sick, I’m filling in for her. It’s quite a treat for me to get to write this much, even though it’s not something I had planned.

For a while now it has dawned on me that most of you don’t really KNOW us. You know that Becky and Rachael are the twins (sometimes called the Twisted Sisters, the Quilting Sisters, the Quilting Twins and a few other misnomers), that write the blog, create patterns and run a crazy fabric store in Dade City and on the web!

I thought I’d tell you a tiny bit about US as people – twins, wives, mothers, sisters and daughters!

Becky and I were born identical twins, and named Rebecca and Rachael. Mom told me that she thought Rachael was spelled like Michael, so that’s how she spelled it as an almost 30-year old in the delivery room! For many years I was the only Rachael I knew who spelled my name with that second a in it. Everyone other Rachael spelled it “Rachel.”

Becky was named Rebecca, which was a little easier for people NOT to misspell as the alternate spelling, Rebekah, wasn’t nearly as common. Downsizing to Becky made it even easier for people. We were born nearly a month early, but still weighed over 5 pounds each at birth. Thankfully, we were healthy and Mom had a good delivery.

We are the 3rd and 4th children of a family with five children. We have a younger sister and two older brothers.

Our father pastored a church in Jacksonville, Florida, where we were born, making us some of a very few true Floridians that exist!

Mom taught piano as long as we can remember, so, of course, we were taught how to play from the time we were able to read. Mom taught us from the kitchen, while she prepared dinner, listening to us practice while she cooked. We both still play musical instruments. Becky accompanies the services at their church plant there in Warsaw and I play the organ in our weekly services, with Mom on the piano. I do consider it a special privilege to be able to do this. Not many daughters have an 88 year old mom who still play as beautifully as our mom does.  Probably our only real claim to fame as pianists was when, in the 10th grade, we participated in a music contest at the WILDS Christian camp and made it to the finals as a piano duet playing a piece called Overture to Zampa. I’ve searched high and low to see if I could locate that music, so we could freshen up on it, or see if we could even play it, but to no avail!

Becky went on and learned to play the flute, as an adult. I, however, failed at learning any other instrument. I wanted to learn to play the trumpet, but that has never come to fruition. It has definitely fallen off my “bucket list” at this point in my life, probably never to be added back.

We taught all nine of our children to play the piano, to at least some degree. Some of the children loved it more than others, but at least none of them has to sit and look at music and say, “I haven’t a clue what those symbols mean.” I had the advantage of having my mom nearby to teach my children to play; Becky got to do it herself over in Poland.

Our mom turned her sewing machine over to us the summer we turned 14, when we began to sew our own clothes for school. We loved it; and sewed constantly. We would combine patterns from different pattern companies and come up with new creations that were our very own. Learning how to sew was not hard for either of us, and we were both good at it before we ever went off to college. I never remember buying any “store bought” clothes before entering college. I’m sure we did, because I have some photos of us in some clothes that I’m sure were bought somewhere, but I don’t recall any such shopping trips. I do remember long, long trips studying pattern books and looking through piles and piles of flat fold fabrics at Fabric King for just the right fabrics!

We made these Bible quiz team outfits when we were in 10th grade (age 15).

We have always been intensely competitive, and for that reason we were separated from each other in school starting in the third grade. By that time we had moved out to Washington State and were in a large Christian school (Tacoma Baptist School) which had two classes of each grade, so we were able to be separated.

We never did attempt to swap classes. I think it was the fear of being caught or else the competitiveness that would have disappointed us had the other one had to take a quiz or test for the other and not known the material well enough. We mostly got A’s in school, and it wasn’t particularly difficult for either one of us.

We did not have a television growing up, and we became voracious readers, often reading 10 to 15 books per week during the summer months.

We both tried out for Junior High cheerleader in the 7th grade and did NOT make the squad. We tried again in 8th grade, and I think they put us on the squad as a mercy act. That was fun, but during 8th grade was when Becky encountered her Bell’s Palsy. To this day, none of us knows how she got it, but it was dreadful for me, as her sister, to know that there was something she was undergoing that I could do absolutely nothing to help.

Mom took her to lots of specialists and they did assure us that over time, she would regain most of her facial expressions. Most people don’t notice, but it was the first major health issue that went wrong with one and not the other.

We ended up moving back to Florida during the summer of our 14th birthday to be with our grandmother in Dade City. Our brothers were both off to college, and so it was just the three girls and us who moved. It was a change of our entire life as we knew it. I hated it immensely, not because I hated Florida, but because life had been easy for me. Becky and I were well known in our school and we had lots of friends. Moving to Florida meant we now had zero friends, and would have to start all over.

However, we learned to be outgoing and managed to condense four years of high school into three;  I graduated as Valedictorian and Becky as Salutatorian. Does that sound good? Don’t think it was so extremely difficult, because there were only 5 of us in our graduating class; Consequently, it wasn’t that big of a deal, but I did get to give a speech! Later, the tables were turned when Becky finished college Magna Cum Laude, and I finished only Cum Laude. (Most of her kids finished Magna or Summa Cum Laude, and mine just finished!)

We then headed off to college just 3 weeks after turning 17, in August of 1979.

We both decided to major in Home Economics Education, (now commonly called Consumer Science Education) since we didn’t feel “good enough” to study any of the fine arts, and figured we could always make a living teaching.

Stay tuned to find out how much “twinning” we did in College and afterwards…and by all means, HOW did Quilted Twins come to be?

   Sorry about how large the photos are.. Becky is the expert in reducing those..and it’s super late now and I’ve got a busy day running the store tomorrow, so just pretend the pictures are smaller. When Becky is better, I’ll get her to edit those down in size! Come back tomorrow for more about us!  

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