Blogger's Quilt Festival

I am so excited to participate in my second Blogger's Quilt Festival!  I had just started blogging right before the fall festival, and I discovered so many fabulous blogs.  I can't wait to see what this year holds!  Thank you Amy and your sponsors for coordinating this awesome event.

All quilts have stories behind them....some are happy or silly...some may be touching or nostalgic...some are longer than others...some are more meaningful than others...but they all have stories.

I chose Got Pink? as the quilt to share during the Festival because of the story behind the quilt.  I have shown this quilt before on my blog, but never really explained the meaning behind it.

About five years ago, I signed up for a Block of the Month at my LQS.  A few months into it, I realized that the included fabrics were hideous.  Around that same time, I spotted the Pink Ribbon Signature Collection by Karen Neuburger for Quilting Treasures and loved it.

My Mom had just been diagnosed with breast cancer.  I decided to make a second set of the BOM with the pink ribbon fabrics into a quilt for her.  Of course I had no idea how much fabric to buy since the patterns were distributed monthly and we were only three months into it, so I erred on the side of caution and bought a ton of each fabric in the line.

As you can tell by the completed quilt, I only made three of these blocks.  I started to worry that what seemed like a good idea at the time, would actually be a really horrible, insensitive, painful reminder to my mom of this awful disease she was battling.

So the three orphan blocks got put aside but never quite forgotten.  Occasionally I would try and think of a way to incorporate the blocks into a quilt without it screaming breast cancer.  I would pull the blocks out, play with them and then put them away again.  Until the time I won this Flutterby fabric and saw how the butterflies in the Flutterby complimented the butterflies in the pink ribbon blocks, and as they say, the rest is history.  [The original post goes more into the design of the quilt rather than the story if you are interested.]

Over the last five years, I never asked my mom her opinion on the subject or even told her I had purchased this fabric and planned to make her a quilt....not even when I gave her this finished quilt for Valentine's Day this year.  I didn't want to make her feel uncomfortable.  I just told her I called it Got Pink? (she had seen the progression of the quilt on my blog and loved it...but my blog posts didn't go into detail) and hoped she wouldn't notice the pink ribbons or other references to breast cancer.  Silly, huh?  [I did get her permission to tell the story today.  She said she is interested in reading it herself ;-)]  

After all this, I planned to give the Got Pink? to my mom this past Christmas.  It didn't work out that way....too many quilts to make...too little time.  Instead, she received it for Valentine's Day.  You know, after all this, I actually think it is good timing....February marks five years of my mom being cancer free!!!!  I love you so much Mom!!!!!  You're the best!

Thank you for allowing me to share my story and quilt.  Enjoy all the quilts on display at the Blogger's Quilt Festival.

Have an amazing day!!