My sister wrote me this poem and presented it to me on Sister Appreciation Day at our cousins retreat last month on the California coast. The poem was inspired by my "Goodnight Moon" quilt that made the cover of the March issue of McCall's Quick Quilts. She made a copy of the quilt and printed the poem on it, then found the perfect frame and glued a printed quilt block to each corner.
My story starts back in 1982 when I submitted my first quilt pattern to a local company called Texas Chic, which was accepted for publication. It was a log cabin quilt - real log cabins, not the traditional log cabin blocks that start with a center square. The fabric pieces were cut out using paper templates and scissors or by drawing directly on the fabric using a ruler and pencil. It was pieced and quilted on the sewing machine using my version of Georgia Bonesteel's lap quilting technique. Sometime later I received a letter from the company saying the owner had become ill and the business was put on hold. I never heard back from them so assume the business closed down and the pattern was never published. It was 20 years later before I did another pattern submission.
In the summer of 2001 I discovered rag quilting and soon had multiple quilts designed using this technique, including the "Goodnight Moon" quilt. Three years and three quilt books later I finally found time to make this quilt after it was accepted with a book proposal in 2004. Publishers have a right to change their mind, so the week before the Houston Quilt Market in 2005 I came home to some boxes on my front porch. I knew what they were without even looking at the labels. A few months earlier the publisher had returned some of the quilts because there were too many for the book, including the sampler quilt that inspired the book. I knew this was the rest of the quilts because if they did the book they would have kept the quilts until after market.
By then I was busy with multiple projects using other techniques so I put these quilts aside. Finally in late 2006 I submitted some of the patterns to McCall's Quilting magazine. In 2007 they accepted 2 of the quilts for their Quick Quilts magazine to be published in 2008. This is the first quilt. The second one is scheduled for the September issue. So with perseverance, hard work, and lots of patience you can make your dreams come true.
For all of you who have helped make quilting a joy for the rest of us, this poem is for you:
I appreciate the fact that you
Dreamed a dream
Then took a step
To make that dream come true.
Quilting was your passion
And you saw it through
With perseverance and hard work
And I am proud of you.
Now little bits of fabric
Have been all sewn together
To form some very special quilts
That you will always treasure.
And others too can sew your quilts
By the templates you've created
And treasure them just as you do
And be appreciated.
So pat yourself upon the back
You made your dream come true
And I will brag a little bit
For I am proud of you.
Merrilee
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