Candy's daughter is Jessica Jones, designer of fabulous fabric and the writer behind the uber popular blog, How About Orange.What first caught my eye, of course, was the very witty, usually very humorous conversation between mother and daughter that continues to take place in the comment section of Jess's blog. I asked myself, who was this Grandma G person anyway? So I clicked on her name, which took me to her blog, where I read that she lived in southern Minnesota, close to where Mark grew up. We started an email correspondence, and then three years ago, when we went back to Minnesota for Mark's high school reunion, we took the time to drive the relatively short distance to meet in person.
Fast forward three years, and we are now very good friends. So no trip to Minnesota would be complete without spending time together.
In April I had decided to make a quilt for her. Years ago, I had purchased some fabric of cats sitting on bare and snowy branches.
I have no clue why I purchased it--I'm not particularly a cat lover myself. But Candy is. And so I knew I had found the perfect person for this fabric. I used Elizabeth's "sliced coins" pattern (highly recommended, by the way) and went to work. The best thing? This quilt was made entirely from my stash, including "The Kitty Chronical," which kind of makes both of us crazy because the word "chronicle" is misspelled."
And this is one of the few quilts completed, from beginning to end, by me (with help from Mark for the basting part) --including the machine quilting.
It wasn't intended to be a surprise. I had kind of done a "teaser" post, actually hoping she would figure it out and enjoy watching the process. The funniest thing was when she said, "Well, it's a good thing that quilt isn't for me because that misspelling would drive me nuts!" Or something like that...When I read that, it occurred to me that she really did not think it was for her.
It was so much fun to give the quilt to such a good friend. Neither of us enjoys having our pictures taken, but this momentous event could not go unphotographed!
I found the coolest fabric for the back, more kitty newspaper articles, but this time I think the words are all spelled correctly.
The sharing didn't end there, however. While I'm the quilter, she is the "bag lady." She does an absolutely impeccable job when it comes to making bags. And I got two of them!
See this cute little model? Candy and I both have granddaughters just a few months apart in age, with curly brown hair and brown eyes. This is Courtney:
Adorable. And I was lucky enough to meet her too!
If you have a chance to meet a blogging friend, my advice is do it! And run, don't walk! We both tend to be introverted so the first time was really stepping out of the box for each of us. But if you take that step, you just might make a friend for life.