Purple Snowflakes??

I realized after I wrote my post yesterday that there would probably be some people thinking to themselves, "Ummm, purple snowflakes?" I thought maybe I should say something about that here.

I don't have any samples at this point, but if I ever find any, I will be sure to scan and post them.

I graduated from high school in 1985. I would say that in 1983 or so, the words "Christmas" and "Holiday" were removed from the educational vocabulary. For me and my peers, it was the beginning of a weird time. We couldn't have Christmas or Holiday trees (mysteriously, decorated trees did show up, they were just called other things). My BFF at the time, Jeffa, and I decided that it was about talking in code. The first year, we took a big piece of butcher paper and drew a "Christmas" tree shape on it. We called it a WishTree. For decoration, we decided to make snowflakes, but because snow seemed to be indicative of a certain holiday time, we decided that they couldn't be called snowflakes, they were, instead, wishflakes. Eventually, we had codes for different colors. Purple wishflakes were the most popular (it was my favorite color at the time, so I'm sure that had something to do with it.)

Growing up, I had never really known how to make "fancy" snowflakes - we folded papers up in squares, cut pieces out and got clumpy, clunky, squat-looking pieces of paper that were really not very attractive to look at. In high school, around the same time that we were speaking in holiday-codes, one of my teachers taught me how to cut beautiful and intricate snowflakes (it's all in the folding, people). From that point on, I was a snowflake cutting maniac - for years!

One year, Roby and I were babysitting his niece around Christmas-time and the only pair of scissors his sister had was a Swiss army knife pair of scissors. Regardless, I used those scissors (I have a great noise to go with the motion, but it doesn't translate to the blog) to create some of the most beautiful and intricately patterned snowflakes I have ever made. We spent many nights making decorations for his apartment when we were poor, so those snowflakes (often purple) turned into something really beautiful and symbolic for us - a time when we were still young and pretty carefree.

So, that's why he wanted purple snowflakes to be put on his quilt. I haven't made any in a long time...Maybe next year.