Passport quilt by Trish Staudt. Quilted by Allison Giroux. For Trisha’s daughter Laura in Kingston
Written by Debbie Anderson Searles (from Good Housekeeping Magazine – June 1984)
Surely, when the final stitch is entered and the needle laid to rest, only a quilter can know the feeling of pride soaring within her/his soul. She/He has the contentment of knowing that a long hard journey has come to an end. She/He has conquered a challenge and through her/his own patience and endurance has created a loving work of art. It may well live on long after she/he as finished her/his walk on this earth.
Perhaps what makes a quilt so special is the pride a quilter feels. For deep in her heart she knows that some distant generation might well gaze upon her quilt, or touch its fragile threads and still feel the love and care that was sewn into it.
A quilt is a thing of beauty, broadly speaking. It is an artistic production in many ways. How many a callous “lord of creation” has scoffed and laughed at his toiling wife, sister, daughter, son, or friend for cutting a perfectly good cloth into little pieces for the sake of sewing them back together again! But the patient quilter has toiled on, without rejoinder; so that her ‘blazing star of Mexico’ could blaze even more brightly on the wall or adorning a bed and her crazy ‘patchwork’ could be crazier than someone else’s?
Carol Russell did this portrait of her friend’s dog – Dasha.
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