Focusing on Life - Week 10

Here is this week’s photo prompt from Sally...

Are you all wrapped up in warmth or are you diving into a dessert that is all wrapped up in yummy goodness? You have a prompt that has many different meanings, grab the camera and show us how you are interpreting "all wrapped up"!

I have to admit that I’ve had more difficulty with this prompt than any of the others so far. I was drawing a complete blank. I ended up discussing it with a friend who helped me through the thought process. Of all the things we talked about, the one that stayed with me was ‘my quilt’.

My mother and I went to a workshop years ago, many more years than I can remember, to learn how to make a Trip Around The World quilt in a day. The instructor was fabulous and we all did have a quilt top completed that day and some even had the whole thing finished before going home.

The reason they worked up so quickly is that we were not actually hand quilting them, simply tying them where the seams meet at the corners of the 6” squares. We were all pretty pleased with ourselves at the end of the day. The only thing I had left to do on mine was to finish off the outer edge and the binding.

Well, other tasks and obligations kept me from working it at home. Eventually, it ended up packed away in the back of the linen closet, virtually forgotten. Until the day that I finally decided, many years later, that I needed to sort through all the stuff in my house and downsize a bit.

A new friend who does a lot of quilting offered to help me finish it off.  I took it over to her place one day and she stretched it out on her quilt frame. I think that is part of the reason I never did it before, I simply did not have the room at my house to do the job.

We spent several days working together on it, chatting and getting to know each other. I really enjoyed the process and was excited to finally be getting it done. Here it is on the frame, being hand quilted along the outside border.

That quilt now resides on my bed and keeps me all wrapped up in warmth every night as I sleep. The bright colours greet me every morning. I love this quilt!

You can see the finished binding and some of the hand stitching in the photo above. I'd like to make another quilt one day, completely quilting it by hand. I've been collecting fabric scraps and remnants for years. It will be spectacular, a labour of love. *smile*