Maria kind of crashed yesterday afternoon – she just got sad, she said – and we talked about it, as we do when each of us is feeling down or trouble, and we figured out that she was feeling a bit overwhelmed with all of the orders she had for potholders, pillows, streaming pieces and quilts. She was very happy to have all that work to do, but she was also yearning to make a quilt out of some wonderful fabric from Japan – Shibori fabric that Sally Brechbill, a friend of ours from Ohio, sent her. I said the quilt wants to come out, you just have to go make it, and so this morning when I went in, she was dancing to the strange music she plays and her smile was back and she was hopping all around with her usual enthusiasm assembling the quilt on the floor of her studio. And out had come this amazing quilt with a warm story behind it. You can get the story on Maria’s website and check out the quilt, which I think will go on sale shortly.

Creative people need to make a living, but sometimes, they have to make things just for themselves.

I call it the rice quilt.