March 2009
Hello Sweet Readers!
When my son was very young, my best friend gave him a cat. Her name was Miss Mischief Meow. She was 7 years old when she came to live with us and my son was only 4. He grew up with Missy laying on his pillow at night and purring until he fell asleep.. She sat there as he did his homework like she was tutoring him. She sat on his lap while he watched TV or did something on the computer. When he got his senior pictures taken, Missy was in one of them.
Two days before he left to go to college, she passed away in his arms.
About ten years ago we were looking at a quilting pattern book and saw a pattern called a Sunbonnet Sue. Many of you might have heard of it. It’s a very old pattern and is of a little girl with a big bonnet on so you don’t see her face. This particular pattern had a little twist to it and that is that she was a cat and had an ear and a tail. My son joked and said we should make one of a black cat and call it “A Year of Missy”, with each one of the twelve blocks being a different month and have a theme. For a while we collected bits of material here and there and set them aside.
Well, as all good ideas go, it got lost somewhere in the shuffle and forgotten. Until, that is, about five months ago. We were sorting through material and came across the swatches of fabric we had started to collect for our Missy quilt. A search was made for the pattern we had seen but it could not be found anywhere except in a book that cost $30 and a bit out of our price range. So, the next best thing was to take a regular Sunbonnet Sue pattern and create our own.
We made the blocks and laid them out and stepped back and looked at them. A little plain, a little dull, and a little boring. Oh, each one was different all right, but it was just a cat in a little dress and a bonnet. Ho Hum. Sure, February had hearts on her dress and a red hat but nothing special. March had shamrocks for St. Patrick’s Day. June was a bride with cream colored roses on her dress. July had fireworks. Yawn
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We are a couple of very creative people and got it in our heads to add a little to it and make it better. So we added a little stitching around each one. Better but not quite there, yet. A little embelishment here, some sequins there, a touch of gold, and a rainbow later and the patches were finished, or were they? Of course not, there is always a little more that can be done. We went online and found holidays for each month, some that we already knew and others that were just a bit different.
We added a swallow to March for the swallows returning to San Juan Capistrano around March 19th. We added Christmas presents and a red ribbon to December, the ribbon because of December 1st being International AIDS Awareness Day. A scottie dog and a peace sign and a creamsicle along with rainbow fabric for August because, Judy Garland was a huge gay icon and The Wizard Of Oz was released on August 2nd, 1939; August is International Peace Month and it is also the month where we have National Creamcicle Day and my son loves creamcicles. We also decided because of the connection to Jerry Garcia’s birthday being in August that we would just make her a flower child as well. June got a little flower girl kitten and a bouquet and two doves holding rings in their claws. My husband drilled the centers out of two pennies and I wrapped them in gold thread to make the rings. The project was now a family event.
Eventually the quilt squares were finished and we set them together with sashing (strips of fabric sewn between quilt blocks to seperate them) and corner stones ( squares of material sewn at the corners of each quilt block where the two strips of sashing meet). It now sits in the sewing area waiting to be quilted, but that is the next adventure.
Our lives are a lot like a quilt. In the beginning it is kinda plain, kinda dull, kinda boring, not much has happened yet to change us. Then people come into our lives and events happen that leave a little stitch here and an embelishment there, and a scrap of the story somewhere else. Little by little the work is done and changes made until the final version of our creation is completed and we end our days on this earth a finished wonder that hopefully others look at and can find the place where they touched us and made us who we were. A total one of a kind, unique,masterpiece.
Until Next Week, Dear Ones, Love & Many Hugz! Leeza
