Lilly....

Meet Lilly.
Say Hi, Lilly. I'm pretty sure if Lilly would spit out that thing in her mouth, she'd say hello.

Lilly is kind of special. You see, Lilly was my baby when I was a little girl. She was given to me the Christmas when just EVERYONE had to have one....and if you didn't get one, well...then....I guess your parents didn't love you or something. Lilly, is over a quarter of a century old! She doesn't show her age at all, does she?

I used to go visit my Grandma Avery on the weekends. She was a very special grandma, in as much as I pretty much thought that she could do anything. She painted with oil paints, let me play with her artist supplies, she played any card game imaginable, did puzzles faster than anyone, she knew all the answers to the puzzles on Wheel of Fortune, bought orange sodas, Klondike bars, and Doritos on Friday nights for me to consume all at once while I got to stay up until the 10 o'clock news came on, and then fed me sticky buns on Saturday mornings.

Yes, she was a very special grandma. When I was about 7 years of age, she taught me how to sew. I sat and sewed little pillows, crudely cross stitched a sampler or two, and happily hand stitched little things that I usually gave away as gifts.

One weekend, I toted Lilly over to my Grandma's house and announced that I would like to learn to sew a dress. And my Grandma helped me to do it.
We laidLily down on some paper and traced around her.....we cut out the paper to create a pattern. Then, she took me up to the 5 and 10 to pick out some fabric, and I chose a happy little pattern of a girl petting a cat, and another pattern with a spray of flowers all over it. We painstakingly hand sewed our hearts out that weekend, and created Lily's dress.

Sure, the stitches were crooked...and the dress was less than flattering. But I made it, and no dress was ever made with more love than that dress. And when the weekend was over, Grandma sent me home with the remaining fabric so that I could create another dress for Lilly.
I never got around to it. Because there's the fabric. And it's over a quarter of a century old too.
So, what do you say, Lilly? Should we ask the Little Apples if they want to learn how to make a dress? I certainly hope that I can be as good a teacher as the one I had many years ago.