Mother of a HUG
Mother of a HUG
This quilt was a year and a half
in the making (all my fault), and the photograph doesn't do it
justice. It's bigger than it looks in the photograph -- the
quilt was draped over a bush by a little creek in Texas, and
that's my hand (up over the top of my head) holding the quilt up,
a little bit.
In December 1999, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.
When I told the folks on the internet quilting newsgroup RCTQ
about it, they did what they just DO, as an enormous group of
quilters sitting around a virtual quilting frame: they made
a quilt!
Those friends of mine, many of whom I've never laid eyes on (but
many, I have met), sat down and made quilt blocks. One
hundred fifty blocks, made by 104 quilters. The blocks came
from 44 states in the US and ten foreign countries, all to
support my mother through her time of trial and thereafter.
The quilters used a bit of a "theme" fabric (which I
had planned to use to make a quilt for my mother -- that bright
butterfly fabric also appears in the border), and filled in the
rest of the block with fabrics of their own. Of course, the
backing HAD to be "Margarita Gonzalez pink".
It took over a year to finish -- simply because I REALLY botched
the fancy machine quilting and had to pick it out and do it over
-- and I just had to put it away for a while, because I was
pretty frustrated. Mama underwent a succesful lumpectomy
and some pretty debilitating radiation therapy, but she came
though with flying colors and will be 89 in 2002.
We at RCTQ call these quilts "HUG"-quilts, and almost
every one has had the word "HUG" in its title.
This one, because it was for my mother, is simply "Mother of
a HUG". My heartfelt thanks to all the men and women
who made blocks for this VERY happy quilt.