Thanks for the insights on how you learned to appreciate your pillow and wall hangings and your understanding of your grandma's love for you and of quilting! Very, very heartwarming indeed and giving me ideas!!
When my youngest niece was graduating from grade school, she was going to have to wear a dress, which was not her custom! She played hockey so well she not only scored most of the goals on a boy's team, but they thought she was so cool they make her captain of the team! My sister came to me (she doesn't sew at all) and asked if I had any ideas on how to have this dress thing come about. I said we should ask the niece to draw a sketch what her idea of a dress was and what colour she wanted. The colour was easy, blue, same colour as the team sweaters, and it didn't really surprise us either that she sketched an elongated hockey sweater as her ideal of a dress!
I got a dozen samples of blue cotton and mailed them to her - she chose a gorgeous intense medium shad of water wash blue - it waswonderful to work with true eye-candy. We had to try a little persuasion re the long sleeves - graduation in June can mean 80° - 90° F weather in Montreal. So she agreed - the dress was a slightly princess style with jewel neck, capped, very slightly gathered sleeve with a tie attached to side seams for a bow in the back. I made it so whe seams could be let out an inch, enough for darts to be put in later (she was then flat as a board), 8" extra for hem to be lengthened. I have to say she looked adorable. Dark hair, tan skin, honey brown eyes - the intense blue was just perfect on her. The dress lasted 4 years with alterations, she's saving it, no chance of getting if for quilting pieces! But I've used a lot of the scraps and have more for future projects. I love the sentimentality of adding a bit of her special dress fabric to special quilts. I put some in our bicentennial church quilt, Ina May Gaskin's Safe Motherhood quilt for a baby boy who died at birth, and have some for a special quilt project for raising awareness on genital mutilations. Sometimes it surprises me how much working with fabric, design, and their purposes means to me!