By David & Anna Smith, Guest Lecturer & ATW Quilt Coordinator
With 36 guests participating during the 180-day Around the World voyage aboard Insignia this year, the colorful ATW quilts have been beautifully completed and raffled. This year, guests created more quilt blocks than expected so two quilts were created, one with 72 blocks and the other with 25 blocks. Each block represents a world port of call visited on the world voyage or life on board. About $2000 was raised in the raffle for the Around the World quilts and was donated to the Insignia crew welfare fund.
During the voyage, guests eagerly shopped for fabrics and embellishments in each port of call and shared their finds with the other quilters. Along the way, the group discovered colorful silks and ethnic fabrics from exotic ports of call that are the envy of any serious fabric collector. The center of both quilts has a photo transferred world map of the Insignia World voyage route with multi-colored beads highlighting each port of call. The multicolored Bali batik quilt backing was found in Bali by guest Sukey Rosenbaum and Around the World Hostess Tricia Walsh who actually hired a driver to take them to the best fabric store and spent hours trying to decide on which fabric to pick – since all were so beautiful.
The backing for the smaller quilt has a special significance as we had not planned for a second. But, as life and luck would have it, we missed the port of Kos in Greece due to weather and went to Rhodes instead where a few of us enjoyed a lovely lunch at Kapilio Tou Gianni in the Old Town. The tablecloth at this restaurant seemed to be the perfect size and color so the manager gave us a nice new one for our project. Even our Cruise Director, Ray Carr, took time to go in search of a special “Lucky Cat” fabric in Hong Kong which he embellished with googly eyes – great entertainment for all – and now has a special place in both quilts. Names of all the quilters participating in the ATW quilt project were added to the back of the large quilt.
The quilters gathered on sea days in Horizons where natural light made fine stitching and needle work easy. As the ATW Quilt Coordinator, Anna offered quilting instruction and workshops for all guests and offered ideas and suggestions in the early part of the voyage. She rejoined the ship for the last 2 months to finish off stitching and quilting on the ship’s trusty sewing machine.
Photo Credits: David Smith, Anna Smith & Sukey Rosenbaum
With the completion of these gorgeous quilts, we’d like to extend our thanks and appreciation to Tricia for her super efforts in keeping the group motivated as well as Sukey who never stopped keeping records and coming up with amazing new ideas for even more quilt blocks. Thanks also to Carol Burks who was willing to sew the sashing and get our second quilt off the ground. Our General Manager, Victor Conceição, was also a great source of encouragement, always dropping by and keeping an eye on our progress. A beautiful complement to the unforgettable Around the World journey this year, the ATW quilt project created a strong community of beginner and experienced quilters with new friendship that will certainly last a lifetime.
Anna Smith is a resident of Kamloops, BC and is the ATW Quilt Coordinator aboard Insignia. Her husband David Smith is a frequent travel photography guest lecturer. They have visited over 135 countries on 6 continents. They are producing a digital photo book and eBook about the 2017 ATW quilt project and will offer it at cost to interested parties. Please visit their website here.
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