Art In The Eyes Of A Child

The first quilt I ever made was a Turning Twenty by Tricia Cribbs.  Oddly, this quilt sits in our spare room and still needs the binding sewed on it.  Not sure how I let that happen but this story is not about that quilt...I digress.  The pattern was so easy (and it was the only thing I had pieced) so I thought it would be fun to take my daughter to the quilt shop and let her pick out twenty fat quarters of her choosing and make a quilt.  I believe she was around 7 or 8 at the time.

We were there forever as she buzzed around finding just the right fabrics.  After I had all the pieces cut, I had her hand them to me in the order she wanted them so that I could begin sewing it together.

As we figured out how she wanted them laid out I found myself asking her why in the world she chose the fabrics she did.  It was a crazy group of the most miss matched fabrics I had ever seen.  She had a reason for every single one because they reminded her of something she loved.  The strawberries made her think of the festival our town holds every spring. The brown one with holly made her think of Christmas.  There is one with blue, purple and green that looks like crackled glass that made her think of the ball at New Years Eve.  I was floored that she had put so much thought into what she had picked out.  

Sadly, this top laid around and collected dust for about 6 years.  I had decided that I wanted to be the one to quilt it since I wanted it to mean something to her even later on.  Finally in 2013 enough was enough and it was time to bite the bullet and finish it.  

I decided to do an all over quilting and was bored with stippling, so I gave loops and hearts a try.  Not too bad for my first time and take into consideration I had obstacles...

To this day she loves her quilt and even takes it with her to sleepovers.  I just hope 20 years from now she remembers how much fun we had picking the fabric out and what each little square meant to her.  She can forget all the yelling I did at the cat.