I quilted it. It took me five months to get to it, but it is done. Only once. I thought maybe I would do one for myself, but instead I concentrated on this one. I grew up on North Hero (Vermont) which is an island in Lake Champlain. My childhood home faces west and Pelot's Bay is just over the hill from my parents house. Some time in elementary school a new family moved in to a house tucked onto the shores of the bay and our families became friends. Now years later, my friend's mother has recently begun heading south for the winters and she asked me if I could make her a quilt to help her remember the bay in winter. For years my family and I have gone ice skating, fishing, and swimming in the bay. In fact, we still do. Now it is my children who can skate for miles up and down, around the ice fisherman's holes, in and out of the beaver swamp. I was honored to be asked. The quilt is from a bird's eye view because I wanted to show the length of the bay and the banks. Every year the water freezes differently and the ice changes many times over the course of the winter. I tried to capture the variety of ice colors and textures and I think I came close.
