Designing Women

I got word the other day from McCall's that another one of my designs will be in the October/November issue of their Quick Quilts magazine and will be out to subscribers and on news stands between August 10 and 31. That means any day now...so I'm watching the mail for my copy. It's always fun to see what they do with my quilts. I made this one as a birthday gift for Ardis -- one of the Batty Babes -- last fall. She quilted it and we sent it to McCall's. I called it "Falling Stars" because of the fall colors I used and the way the different sized stars fall across the quilt. They call it "Patchwork Galaxy"...and I like that name, too. This will be my 8th design published by McCall's and there will be another one next spring.

I know a couple of ladies who have granddaughters about Savannah's age and they are enjoying showing the girls how to sew. I've tried with Savannah, but she's not really interested in the accuracy required or the techniques used. But she is very artistic and loves and appreciates quilts. Her eyes lit up one day when she came over and saw me sketching a quilt design on graph paper with colored pencils. So when she adopted her little Cabbage Patch girl, Ella Rose, one of the first things she talked about was me making a quilt for the little baby. We were still on vacation, so she was trying to describe to me what she wanted. Finally she told me just to wait. She said that when she got home she would draw a picture of how she wanted it to be. So here we go...the next generation of quilt designers! I couldn't be more proud. And sure enough -- next time I saw her she had drawn a picture for me.

So I went to my fabric stash and started to pull little pieces of fabric that looked as close to her design as I could come. I paid attention to the details she had about the sizes and colors of the squares. She made it clear that she wanted some blank ones that she could write words on. (She got this idea from the quilt I made for her when she was born.) And she wanted some pictures on it. I surprised her by printing pictures of her with Ella Rose on the squares she had planned to draw pictures in. She was surprised by that because she didn't know I could do that. She was very happy with the final results. It seems we make a good team. Who knows what we'll be able to collaborate on in the future? I can't wait to see!