I have known Joy for 15 years now since we first started at my former agency. She was on the advertising side and I was on the digital side and we got in trouble together on more than one occasion. When I left the agency close to five years ago, and Joy did shortly thereafter, it gave us the opportunity to be just friends, not if the “work friend” variety.

Joy turned forty close to two years ago and I had the idea to do an “All About Me” quilt (pattern by Terry Atkinson Designs) about a solid year or so before her birthday, so this has been going on for some time.

Here is the front. I gathered fabrics for quite a while of Joy’s favorite things – cocktails, books, cute guys, chocolate, cupcakes, candy, New York, London, architecture, her alma mater UNC, travel, money and clipboards and added a Happy Birthday print. The money is a reference to our decide if working together on the United States Treasury’s currency launches, and the clipboards are aim inside joke about her attention to detail when we managed to marketing around our clients’s former golf tournament, the Transitions Championship.

I really love the cocktail fabric. Beyond being colorful and sparkly, it is just pretty and detailed which is like Joy. Although, to be accurate, this should have been Tom Collins drinks, which are Joy’s favorite (so much so that we once hit room service to deliver us a pitcher of them…)

Joy generally doesn’t do things half-@ssed. For her birthday she didn’t just gather the crew at a pub, or throw a little brunch. Oh no… joy threw the wobbly wobbly, dress-up 40’s themed, NYC scavenger hunt followed by a happening party at the Churchill in NYC. She has running all around town like lunatics, in wanna-be 40’s attire solving clues and posting photos to social media.

Here we are getting ready to leave for the hunt and then racing around the city gathering clues.

And, jus for fun, the boys. Note Rob’s Erin-made vest. I’m not sure why I chose to make that. It isn’t like I couldn’t have found a vest in any of the 1,000 stores in Bergen County. Oh well, he liked it.

This brings me to the back of her quilt. Jen and I pieced the front and tried to coordinate with her sisters to get patches signed in advance to let folks write messages to Joy for her 40th.

We put them all together as a signature side and brought the top and back of the quilt to the party with fabric markets. Those that didn’t get to sign in advance, signed at the party. Disclaimer – Some were very drunk when they did so. And some did so time and time again.

And here comes the embarrassing part. I took the quilt home to quilt and bind it. But didn’t do it. I was afraid of messing it up. So it sat. And sat. Until the holidays when I finally loaded it onto the machine and for some reason chose to do a pantograph. With blue thread. I don’t know what I was thinking. But I finally got it quilted and the Jen curled up and got it bound. It isn’t my best long-arm effort, but it was heartfelt. That counts for something, right?

And it was perfect timing as we had an impromptu get together last weekend and guess who came over? Yep! Joy was finally reunited with her quilt, almost two years after her birthday, making me an awful friend. But at least she likes the quilt!

It was a great party, Joy is a great friend, and Jen and I had fun making her quilt. I hope she uses it in good health for at least another 40 years.