I am working on planning a quilt that I need to start soon. I want to make it for my husband, for our 23 anniversary. We got married February 14 1987, therefore, I plan to use a red heart for the center of each block, and decorate around each heart with memories of our life together. I gave Jorge a kidney in 1998 and the center of that year will have a red kidney rather than a red heart. I will embroider a stork in each year our children were born, and the last block will have many little hearts like if they were growing for upcoming anniversaries. I will have tiny pictures of places we have lived printed on fabric and attached on the year we moved, and have marked the year we got our house and the year we drove around the country together. The problem is that some years were "boring" and nothing happen, or I just can not remember what may have happened. I need to put all you brains together and ask this: If you were making this quilt, what are the things you will like to celebrate in the quilt?

I know we all have different lives, but in general, we are all very similar. Do you think I should leave those years with no memories with just the heart and don't worry about it? I am very curious to know what you all think.

So far this is only a plan, but knowing how I work, once I start I will want to finish it right away.

Maria

Thanks!! I will find out when we went to Puerto Rico to visit family and add those too. Great idea!!

Maria

I like your idea very much.

I have a feeling that once you get going on the years that you have the "definite" memories for, things will come to mind for the other years.

Maybe a wedding for another family member? When you got a pet? When the pet died? children's milestones? parents' anniversaries?

It's okay to just have a "plain" heart for the "just going along" years - nothing wrong with that !

Any family vacations with the kids? do events tendto be clustered together that you are going to have a number of bloxks that have significant life events and then a bunch without? Maybe rather than putting the years in order, you can mix them up so you could scatter the "special" years among the years that things are just going along routine. It could then kind of be like a treasure hunt. Also, I don't know how old your children are, but are there events they remember that you could include on the blocks? Special holiday memories? Funny events that happened that they remember? Sometimes it is the little things that commomorate time together.

a special gift - an event that makes you laugh about it now - where you met -

How about just writing something like..."The year I fell head-over-heels in love with you all over again". Or "I learned you like peanut butter & chocolate"

They don't really have to be exact years...as long as he appreciates that you remember those feelings.

You might add a family saying in a "boring" year.

If you had a child on a sports team, you could include a symbol to mark all the games you went to that year. The year of basketball or something.

That is such a great idea, Maria. For some of the years you can't think of other things, how about just putting a place holder like "Married for 17 years" "21 years since we got engaged" etc.

maybe a song that was popular then - or some silly sayings

Don't know if this applies to you but some couples have a special song that is "their song". Maybe you could put some of the lyrics to your song in the "boring" years.