My quilting streak continues, this time for a very special little girl and her mama who needed to be shown how many people were cheering them on.
Ruth is an old family friend. My mother-in-law is best friends with her mother-in-law, Bear and his siblings grew up with her husband and his siblings, when we were very first married and I was still planning on being an actress, we even helped out with her husband’s wedding video business.
Since then we’ve all gone off in a bunch of directions, but stay closely connected through this family network. Ruth’s husband is one of the creators of Yo Gabba Gabba, and the one responsible for the fun we had when we went to the live show.
Davy was born with some significant challenges that have led to surgeries and medications and serious medical bills, so all her friends and family got together to throw a benefit. I couldn’t attend, but I wanted to contribute something to the silent auction so I busted out a few of my favorite techniques and made a Yo Gabba Gabba inspired quilt.
The fabrics are all old Amy Butler favorites I had left over from other projects. I hoard her fabric, so I had just enough of different pieces to make a crib sized quilt. The colors couldn’t have been more perfect. Totally girly, but with a big bite of acid.
And because I can’t stop myself from machine appliqueing, I made a center panel with a message from the show. I downloaded a Yo Gabba like font and drew a flower like Foofa wears, and used this sentiment that comes from a song Muno sings when he’s too afraid to go to sleep.
They were looking for items to be auctioned off, but the whole time I was working on this I had little Davy in my mind. Being a mom of a kid with special needs is wonderful and hard and often lonely. I wanted to show Ruth solidarity, I wanted to lend Davy courage. I wanted to wrap them both up and tell them to not be afraid, that their lives won’t look like other people’s but they will be rewarding and full of love, to welcome them into a network of people who learn a whole different way of finding value in people and in life.
The quilt never made it to the auction. It’s now keeping Davy company in her rocking chair, which is exactly how it should be.