“Waitin’ for Aunt Lydia’s Kookies”
|
Every year,
the Quilting Bee offers the wonderful supporters of the Bee a chance
to up their percentages of winning a quilt from the Bee. We do this by
creating a smaller quilt that can be used as a wall hanging. This
quilt is what we call the “Bonus Quilt” and when a supporter buys five
tickets for “AIRElifted” they receive a free ticket for “Kookies” this
year.
“Waitin’ for Auntie Lydia’s Kookies” is truly a universal endeavor by the quilting bee. It started out with an email from Jeri Langman to Linda Cunningham, with an attachment of a great little quilt she had seen in a quilting magazine of three hens trying to look into a mail box. Jeri said to Linda that this was something Airedales really would be doing and would she (Linda) be willing to do the actual quilting of the wall hanging if Jeri could manage to get the top of the quilt done. Now we say manage because up until that time, Jeri had done just one block for the Quilting Bee (Bentley with Kat Kite in the “Annette’s House” quilt) and had never, never, never attempted anything so rash as to do a whole top of a quilt by herself even if it was just a wall hanging sized one. Linda was up for the challenge and immediately agreed, thinking this would be fun. Jeri in the mean time was panicking; she can’t draw stickmen without having to explain what they are and what they’re doing, so how in the devil was she going to draw three Airedales looking into a mailbox? Only one solution came to her mind – beg. That’s right; she emailed Ann Curran, the famous artist of Ragtail Airedale Terriers and asked for help with the project. ( www.ragtail.co.uk ) Ann agreed without hesitation and Jeri emailed her a copy of the Hen Quilt and her ideas of what she imagined for the “Airedale” quilt. 
Within the week, Ann had emailed back the
drawing of what would become “Kookies”.
Meantime,
back in Michigan, Linda was not to be left out of the project and
suggested to Jeri that the perfect name for the quilt would be
“Waiting for Auntie Lydia’s Kookies” in honor of Lydia Ross of the
adtlovershome internet list. Lydia has kookie contests on the list
for fun. It encourages great tall tales from the group about their
Airedales and the winner is randomly picked by Alice and Andy (her
Airedales) and receives in the mail a wondrous assortment of
doggie treats made by Lydia. Lydia is not above bribing the group
into giving generously to rescues in need. Her offering of
“Kookies” has generated many hundreds of dollars to various rescue
causes. When Lydia has a Kookie Kontest to raise awareness of our
quilts and increase tickets sales, the days of the contest result
in thousand of dollars in additional ticket sales.
So, it was unanimous that “Kookies” it was and an email was off to Lydia, asking permission to use her name and the famous Kookies for our quilt. Lydia Ross has since joined the Quilting Bee and has been contributing to it from day one with great ideas for the quilts and by using her talents in scrap booking to make the memory book covers for both “AIRElifted” and “Kookies”. 
Fiber Artists: Jeri
Langman and
Linda Cunningham
Artist: Ann Curran
|
