It wasn’t long ago that I found out that mug-rugs were all the rage – well, at least in the quilting world, where I sometimes live. These twelve mug-rugs, with weekly snail-mail letters and periodic phone chats, were my small monthly contributions to my mother’s life as she convalesced for a year in Maryland at the home of my dear sister. Making mug-rugs with birds on them seemed the perfect idea as Mom loved birds, but because the pattern is not an original, (sameliasmum.com) to make them as special as I could for her, I used fabric from her ‘stash’ whenever possible, highlighting each month with traditional colors or themed fabric, and sewing them on my sweet little Singer Featherweight sewing machine that Mom gifted me in the early 1970’s. Recently returned to me by my sister, this collection of mug-rugs now represents remembrances of long ago ‘downtown’ trips to Newberry’s in Saranac Lake for fabric (and turtles, but that’s another story), Simplicity patterns, sewing projects, the passion for sewing she passed on to me, and the patience she poured out at each sewing juncture and far-flung ‘creative’ foible. We would sometimes talk about these little birds on the phone, but it wasn’t the mug-rugs per se that took conversational precedence, it was the sewing memories…