Quilty Friendships Begin Here

It has been said the a true friend knows you better than you know yourself. I can agree completely with that statement, and I have proof hanging on my porch. Little more than a year ago I was blessed enough to have another quilter stumble onto my blog and post a comment. That led to emails back and forth. Literally thousands of emails have been swapped, and there was even a trip to the International Quilt Fest in Chicago where we were able to meet in person and spend one of the best days ever. Words just can't describe just how fun that day was.

All that being said, many months ago I received in the mail a package that contained the print that is shown above and below, hanging on my porch wall. When that box arrived in the mail from my dear friend, the porch didn't even exist. We hadn't built it yet. When I opened that box, I literally gasped. It was a scene that I had seen many times in my mind. For 15 years my husband and I have privately spoken of "the porch" that one day we would sit on, in wicker chairs, watching our grandchildren playing in our back yard while we sipped tea and looked back on our life. One year he even found a greeting card for me that depicted the exact scene we both had seen in our minds, describing our hope for our future. We had never discussed this with anyone else - it was just our quiet wish to one day own our own home in sunny Florida with a porch that we could sit on and reflect. We have been very blessed since moving to Clearwater, and the dream is now the reality, and today I was able to hang the final piece on that porch of my dreams - the print from a friend who knows me well enough to see something tangible and know that it matches me - right down to the exact wicker chairs and the hanging baskets of red impatiens. I am a very lucky girl. Thanks Mare. You're the best.