When my great-niece and namesake Alice was born, I made a crib quilt for her--my first ever crib quilt. Her older sister Katie was so taken with this quilt that she wanted me me to make one for her. So soon I made her a "napping quilt." Pictured here are Katie on her quilt at the left and Alice on hers. This photo was taken 8 years ago! Both girls became attached to their "quilties," as they called them. Even today, the quilts are folded at the ends of their beds.
Fast forward several years. Katie was going to England with her grandparents, who wanted her to pack lightly, since they were all going to have to manage their own luggage. Katie asked me if I could make her a very small quilt from some of the same fabrics as her "quilty" since she was concerned she'd not be able to sleep well without her quilty. This I did, and the little quilt made the trip to England and then joined the other quilt on her bed.
Fast forward another couple of years. This summer Alice is attending a sleep-away camp. She, too, requested a small quilty to take to camp, one using some of the fabrics from her crib quilt. I had to search to find these scraps, and those that I found were quite small. She had always loved the soft, touchable
Minky fabric that I had used to back Katie's small quilty. I found some scraps of this fabric as well. Alice's little quilt is a bit more complex than is her sister's, because of having to use such small pieces of fabric. It makes me happy that these little girls are so attached to their quilts that they want reminders of them to take with them when they're away from home!
PS These little quilties are more accurately "blankets" than quilts, since they are not quilted and there's no batting between the fronts and backs. But I won't quibble about terminology; the girls will no doubt refer to them as their "mini quilties!"
I finished the oil spill journal quilt today. Because in my first posting about this quilt, I didn't really discuss the construction of it, I will now. I have had the center portion of the quilt for a long time, a lovely piece of fabric I knew would come in handy some day. It seemed better than any other in my stash to represent the deceptive beauty of the oil spill, all the vivid colors which are lovely but which represent something so deadly. The bird fabric, too, I've had for some time and used once in a banner in honor of a young man who died tragically young. I had other bird prints, but these looked as if they could be sea birds. The fish fabric was a no-brainer; I was glad that I found this one with a suitably-sober, black background. I "fussy cut" the Mother Earth out of a larger piece, and I drew with ink the crying eyes. The huge teardrop is out of proportion to the eyes on Mother Earth, but I wanted to make the teardrop prominent and thus made it large. The "veil"--a raggedly-cut piece of sheer fabric, was a last-minute inspiration. As soon as I tried it out, both the quilt and the poem came together. Today I have quilted this journal quilt very simply and minimally. I used "invisible" thread in the hope that it would blend in to all the different colors in this small quilt. In the bobbin I used a variagated thread, and this shows up nicely on the back of the quilt--which back used the same black fish fabric as the front borders. 
