This is my symphony

(Oh, don’t worry! It’s not me …)

I have a friend who quilts. A lot. She has a special gift with applique and her creations are one-of-a-kind. Even more impressive is that she’s a hand quilter, meaning she doesn’t use a sewing machine for piecing or quilting. Maybe, she says, she’ll machine stitch a binding. Otherwise, she makes the Real Deal–the kind of handmade love that most of us only know from Little House books. Like the Velveteen Rabbit, her quilts are loved and used, not simply displayed. (She’s even had to re-bind some of her family’s favorites that have started to fray.)

Now this friend of mine goes on weekend quilt retreats (which I never even knew were a thing!), she quilts with a local group in a church basement, she stitches with friends (definitely not me), and she organized her parish’s first ever quilt show this summer.

So what does this quilter do with a concrete retaining wall at the top of her driveway? Why she “quilts” it, of course!

Friend Denice (she also writes about her adventures on her blog Denice’s Day) spent the better part of the summer planning, sketching, and painting this mural–and of course you know she did it all by hand. No pattern, no how-to book or video. She just searched for striking quilts on Pinterest, fussed over colors, and pestered the hardware store guys for concrete painting tips.

The result is nothing less than spectacular. While she was working on it I’d see photos on her blog and listened to how the work was going, but nothing prepared me for the smile I felt when I finally drove up her steep–very steep–driveway and was greeted with this little wonder of color and light.

I think it should be in Art Prize, myself, but what do I know? Only what I like, I guess–and Denice’s mural is a work of art, plain and simple.