We all doubtless possess objects that reminds us of times or people that have provided comfort in our lives — perhaps this is something as simple as a favorite coffee/tea mug, a winter scarf, or a storybook that we were read as a child. I still have a coverless, tattered book of children’s poems that I cherish because, reading it, I nearly can transport myself back to hearing my mother’s voice. She had been an actress in college and when she read, it was dramatic and wonderful.
More recently, well, 23 years ago!, a friend surprised me with a beautiful quilt; she’s an expert quilter and one of the judges in the Name the Turtle Contest. It’s that quilt that I warp up in when I am upset or ill or otherwise need comforting.
The power of stories and quilts to both comfort and create lasting memories is built into each Storybook Quilt. I see a child being held on the lap of a close relative, cuddled up under the quilt, listening to a familiar and soothing voice. The tale the voice is telling plays out in the fabrics in the quilt squares, which both the reader and the listener seek out as the story goes along.
Maurice the Cat Storybook Quilt
The child’s and relatives’ names, expressions and other familiar details are incorporated into the story itself. So, the story becomes not just a story, but an adventure in which the child participates. After a reading or two, the quilt develops a life of its own. As the child looks again and again at the quilt squares, bits of the story spring easily to mind and new twists in the story are imagined.
Perhaps best of all, that wonderful, comforting feeling of being held and read to becomes an integral part of the quilt—always there, now and for years to come.
Win a Storybook Quilt for the treasured child in your life by entering the Name the Turtle Contest, now though August 30th.
