Making Friends Through Quilts

Along life's journey I find it amazing how friendly, giving and generous I find the quilting community.  Along with all these wonderful people along the way you find others who do not make quilts or sell the wares to create them or teach about it, but you find those that love quilts.  One of those people crossed my path yesterday.  Well, actually it all started a few weeks before Christmas.
One day as my dear hubby and I were out running errands I received a phone call, as I looked at my cell I realized it was a number I did not recognize.  Upon answering the lady at the other end introduced herself and said she had been talking to a dear friend of my family and she had suggested that I might be able to construct the quilt the lady was desiring.
Now as a general rule, but rules are made to be broken sometimes, I don't make a quilt top for others but prefer to just do machine quilting for them,  That being said as we talked I realized there was something special in her voice that intrigued me and I feeling that perhaps this might be the time to break the rule.  This was to be a special quilt for her.  She has a love of quilts and because of life's circumstances had never felt the time was right to acquire a handmade quilt.  But this year will be her 33rd wedding anniversary and she felt it was time to discard her present department store quilt for the handmade quilt she had always wanted.
We talked at length about color, patterns and I threw out some rough estimates based on the size she was wanting.  I asked her to let me think about it and to contact me again after Christmas and after we had both thought about it.  Well last week the phone rang again and the lady once again was eager for me to make her quilt so we set up a date for her to stop by and I would show her patterns and fabric.  The day was yesterday and the minute we met I knew I was going to have a new close friend.  We are both strong in our faith and share other values also.
I had previously searched for patterns and found one in particular that appealed to me for an anniversary quilt.  She had mentioned previously a Log Cabin with sharp light dark contrast.  So I was looking around for a visual to get an idea of what she might like and while doing so came across one in a book by Judy Martin that had her criteria plus Log Cabin Hearts.  When I opened that particular book I could tell by the look on her face and the tears in her eyes we had hit upon her quilt. I then assisted her in the fabric selection. We arranged the fabrics and I asked her to step back and asked her what she thought.  Her comment was she saw "love and happiness" when she looked at the fabric and the photo in the book.  So the fabric is now cut and ready for me to start the construction process.

I mentioned to her about this blog and asked her if she was on the internet and if she would like for me to blog about the progress of her quilt, she was happy about that idea so there will be future blogs about this quilt for her to follow along.
But the amazing thing is that when this quilt is completed not only will she have the quilt she has been wanting but I will have another dear friend thanks to quilting.
Life is a journey....look for those special moments along the way.