Bad Sue Quilts goes back to 1997. One of the earliest squares created was a Bad Sue/Lizzie Borden theme, quite well done I think!
The idea started in the 1980s when 12 members of a seamstress local in Lawrence, Kansas, created this quilt, which has since been purchased by collector Kitty Clark Cole and donated to the Michigan State University Museum in 2001:
This famous quilt started it all! This quilt was a collaborative effort. Bad things happen to Sue that could have only happened in the 1980s.
Skylab falls out the sky
Jaws III
Three-mile Island Nuclear Disaster
Suicidal Koolaid in Africa
Other Blocks find Sue:Eaten by a snake
Buried Alive
Hit by lightening
Space walking and coming unattached
Tied to railroad tracks
Hanging
Boiled in a pot
Shot by arrows
Strangled by a Sunflower
Bad Sue is a permutation of the old Sunbonnet Sue design, originated in the early 1900s by Bertha Corbett Melcher, a children’s book illustrator. She published “The Sunbonnet Babies” in 1900, in which she drew girls with their faces concealed by their bonnett.
The last Bad Sue swap was in 2005. The deadline for the next swap is fast approaching: September 15th, 2007. Here are the details.
