Three years before my first granddaughter was born I began making hand-pieced quilt blocks using a light and a dark purple print with a solid lavender fabric. I had no particular plans for these blocks--just liked the colors and wanted to practice piecing to gain accuracy.
Several years after her birth it became evident that Tami was a "Purple Person" for every time she was given a choice of colors for something, she chose purple, lavender, lilac -- you get the picture!
So when she reached her 23rd birthday in 2003 she advised me that was her golden year. To me that meant 50 so I had to asked her what she was talking about. And that is when I learned that when the day of the month you were born is the same as your age--that is your golden year. Wow, I had mine way back when I turned 9 years old and didn't even know it!
At that time I was cleaning out our spare bedroom which had become an extra storage room and came upon my box of blocks. I had made twelve of them all from the same three fabrics. Thru the years I had managed to add several new prints to my stash that were shades of purple. I then decided to make Tami her special quilt and bought two more solids--a lavender and a dark purple. Using these with the prints I had collected, I made 13 more blocks; 12 of them were pieced and the last one was an appliqued Sunbonnet Sue carrying a goose with two geese walking beside her. This was the design I used for a wallhanging as her birthday gift when she turned 9 and I used it again for the cover of a photo album I gave her that Christmas. I still had some scraps of the dark print I used for the original blocks and the other two appliques so this block was centered on her quilt giving me 25 blocks. So for her 25th birthday she got her special treat!
Tami was born on her great-grandfather Hanlon's birthday on Aug. 23rd and so she got married on her great-grandmother Hanlon's birthday on Aug. 16th -- 28 years later. Unfortunately both great-grandparents died years before her wedding. For her shower gift, I dug out some scraps from the quilt and made pillow shams of Overall Sam (with a dog) and Sunbonnet Sue (with a cat). They actually have these pets and I designed these blocks especially for these shams.
Below is a photo of the "Goose Girl" wall hanging made for her in 1989 and and the pillow shams made for her wedding shower in 2008. That's Tami and Bobby on their wedding day in 2008 down at the bottom.
