In the summer of 2006, Penny Gold arrived at our week-long Design Camp workshop. Penny had emailed earlier to say that she would be working on a grieving quilt about the death of her only child who was killed in a car accident a year earlier. She explained that she was a private person and didn’t want to share what she was working on with other students. We said fine and told her to let us know how we could support her.

Penny developed deep friendships in the class and has spent the past 10 years working on a series of quilts about the loss of Jeremy. Bill has met with her annually since 2006 to give her constructive criticism about her work and ideas for the quilts in the series. So it was especially meaningful when Penny wrote us to share the happy news that she’d be having a show of her series on loss this week. Bill went to the opening last weekend while I was on mom duty. If you are driving through southern Illinois this week, be sure to drop by, read the stories behind the exhibit Loss and see how Penny has tackled this heartbreaking topic.