Back in 1993 I belonged to the "Laurel Piecemakers," a group of quilters who met once a month. We usually had a lecture or quilting lesson each month and for this year it was decided that twelve ladies would each choose a quilt block and teach the others how to make it--one each month. The pattern was our choice and so twelve ladies including me volunteered and stated which block they would teach so there were no duplicates. I love making the Sunbonnet Sue designs and that was my choice. I was then assigned the month of April. Returning home, I quickly designed my own SBS who I named "Little Miss April." She is carrying a yellow tulip and has a white dogwood blossom on her hat.
I went through my fabric stash and found a dusty green, a deep pink also dusty looking and a printed fabric with just the right shades of pink and green flowers and leaves and decided to use these same three fabrics for each block. My granddaughter, Lindsay, had a bedroom that had a shag carpet about that shade of green and the wallpaper was a pale pink with dusty pink roses with dusty green leaves. Perfect!!! I decided I would make this quilt for her. She turned 9 years old that year.
The monthly classes went smoothly and I made a block a month and got it assembled to show at our January "Show & Tell" and it was received very warmly by the other quilters. The problem is that I got busy about that time and the quilt top was put away and forgotten for a few years and then one day I came across it while looking for something else and I layered it and completely hand-quilted it which took a while. The cable in the border took nearly 100 hours alone. So Lindsay got her quilt for Christmas that year and would you believe by then the family had moved into a new home and her new room was green and yellow? She liked it anyway and said she would be going back to pink someday and as I write this she has graduated from Mount Saint Mary's College in Emmittsburg, Maryland in 2006; worked for a year at a medical research lab in Maryland and was preparing to relocate to the Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina area to work for a pharmasudical company doing more research when an opportunity came up to go to Korea and teach their elementary children the English language. So off she goes for the 2008-09 school year. She is not taking the quilt with her, but may send for it later as she is very limited on the amount of luggage she can take with her.
Below is Lindsay as a high school senior back in 2002--she hadn't received the quilt yet, but I did get it to her while she was in college.
