Madelyn Rose's Baby Quilt

This is a baby quilt for my great niece Madelyn Rose, born just before Christmas in 2020. At first glance, it doesn’t seem like a typical baby quilt. That’s because it isn’t. And of course, there’s a story behind this quilt.

About a month before Madelyn was due to be born, me and my three sisters were cleaning out the family home of 65 years. Dad had recently passed (Mom having died twelve years earlier) and we needed to put the home up for sale.

 While sorting the linens we came upon a small table cloth with yellow roses. “I’ll take that,” I said, “and make it into a baby quilt for Madelyn Rose, a quilt from me and from Mom, Madelyn’s Great Grandmother. This if course made Madelyn’s Grandmother, my baby sister Kathy, tear up. Not my intention.

However, the tablecloth was too small, so I added a checked border using colors in the tablecloth. I appliqued a few butterflies to cover stains that had persisted through the years. On the back I used a soft yellow minky fabric which is almost as soft as newborn skin. And the final touch was to bind the quilt with wide white satin (picture taken before binding added) because my younger sister Mary loved satin binding on her blankets when she was a toddler. I can remember her rubbing the satin binding with the fingers of her left hand while she sucked the thumb on her right hand.