Gail De Vos
Seba Beach, AB

And the storyteller set the stories free ...

Years ago, I adapted the string game "The Yam Thief" to talk about the power of stories and since then it has become my signature piece. When talking about this quilt block to my daughter Esther, she suggested that I incorporate a string game, so I flew with the idea to my son-in-law Lawrence who got the image from paper onto the material. It then made its way to my mother, Lillian Shukster, who executed the embroidery itself. (She volunteered as she has always done when it comes to storytelling events.)

The block is actually unsigned because it is the result of a family effort including my daughter Taryn who patiently taught me the string game way back when. All of us have taken the stories out of the bags that the thief so tightly enclosed them so that ...

You can tell them and listen to them again and again.