Sarah’s Quilt – 1995
Since I haven’t been doing much sewing or other fresh crafting lately I decided to take this opportunity to share some of my oldies but goodies. I was going to call it, “Flashback Friday” or “Time Warp Tuesday” or “Way Back Wednesday.” But it is Monday and I couldn’t come up with any clever alliteration for today so I’m just calling it what it is.
When Sarah was ready to move out of the fantasy that she actually ever slept in her crib and give a big girl bed a try I made her this quilt. I guess I thought if I made her something really special and made a big deal out of it she’d actually SLEEP IN HER OWN BED! (ha!) I just loved all of these vintage 30′s style fabrics and had collected a few of them. When it was time to make the quilt I added more in the purples and teals to go with the color scheme I was working with at the time.
I pieced the squares in a fairly random pattern trying to avoid any weird color blocks or repeated patterns. The batting is an organic cotton (hard to find way back then but well worth it). I then spent months hand-quilting the thing. The first and last time I hand quilted anything. Not my thing. At the time I was still sewing everything on my old Singer and it just didn’t have the cajones to handle a large quilt.
I don’t specifically recall if the quilt worked magic and kept Sarah in bed all night. (It must have worked a little because Emma came along about a year later.) When we moved to this house I used it as a color palette for their shared room with a Noah’s Ark theme. Now it just lives in a big wicker chest in the guest room with other quilts (that I will share soon) and gets pulled out for sleep overs.
It has a few marker stains from the nights when Sarah would stay up to all hours drawing and doodling. When it first happened I was upset that she had “ruined” it. But as time has gone on I now cherish those stains as much as the quilt itself. They bring back a memory of a special time and activity she really loved.
_________________________________________________________
So readers, do you have a special handmade item from your childhood? Did you make your child (or grandchild, niece, nephew, godchild, etc.) something special that brings back memories of their childhood?
Leave a reply