I ... Promised You a Rose Garden--
This quilt was my first venture beyond the rail fence pattern (all the way to a strip-pieced Double Irish Chain). I LOVED the fabric in the middle. I made the top, intending to give it to my secretary. One night, for a reason I didn't understand, the un-quilted top simply INSISTED that I box it up and mail it to a dear friend, Doug Holloway (one of my ex's fraternity brothers, and just a super guy). So, I did that. The next night after I mailed the top, Doug's wife Mary Bess called, and said Doug had finally pretty much succumbed to the cancer he'd wrestled down for ten years. He died, in October 1990.

Mutual friends told me later that Doug kept that quilt-top close, and would hold it on his lap, trace the seams with his finger, and show it off to visitors, saying that his old friend Sarah "put all those little squares together."

I had the devil of a time wrestling the top back from Mary Bess so I could get it quilted. My mother and her quilting friends hand-quilted this one, and I sent it back to Mary Bess. The photo shows Mary Bess, who happily remarried 5 years later, and is the principal of a middle- school in Encinitas, CA.

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