As a child I collected wooden rulers with pictures as souvenirs. When I met DH I discovered that he, too, had collected rulers. Somewhere, we still have a collection. But, what do you do - or need - with a drawer full of wooden rulers? As souvenirs they had severe limitations - not the least, how to display.
Years later, when we were still living in Australia and visited New Zealand, I began collecting souvenir teaspoons. After all, everyone can use teaspoons, right? Again, they had limitations in terms of their souvenir value.
When we visited Texas, I wanted to have some kind of memento of our time spent there. I did buy a water bottle from The Alamo (because I was desperately tired of drinking out of disposable plastic bottles) and since coming back home, have made a photo book of our time there. But the former was out of necessity, and the latter is so that The Most Adorable Granddaughters# 8 and #9 do not forget the time we had together. But still I wanted more in terms of souvenirs.
While In Texas a dear friend of my DIL's family gave me a large piece of quilting fabric that had well-known icons of Texas (I assume, since I really don't know). It's a gorgeous blue colour that I love.
One day this lovely lady took me to a quilt shop.
A real quilt shop. Which is a luxury I haven't experienced in a long time. That I was overwhelmed is, well, an understatement.
I really didn't know where to start in choosing a souvenir fabric and ended up going with just a few small pieces that appealed. A few weeks after arriving home, I put them together into two small quilts.
One quite small (and which probably doesn't match any of my decor since it feels quite American but this star I saw in multiple forms all over the place):
Both are souvenirs from our time in Texas that I hope will prove more useful and enjoyable than wooden rulers or fancy teaspoons.
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