Look at my treasure!

When Suzi Hokonson, a self-described lover of textiles, makes herself think about what she would choose if she could only take one thing as she left her home, she mulls over the pieces that hang on the walls of her home. Then she chooses.

“I have this piece I call ‘For a rose,’ ” Hokonson says. “And I absolutely treasure it.”

Hokonson found the 28- by 28-inch 1930s pillow cover at a garage sale almost 20 years ago.

“It was so dirty I didn’t even recognize what it was,” she says. “But after I cleaned it and framed it, it seems to glow.”

Hokonson, a recognized quilter, displays the piece using a technique she developed and calls, “Suzi’s Hang Art.”

“I quilted around the roses, and the stems, and then quilted a grid background,” she says. “That made it come alive.”

Hokonson estimates that at least 500,000 people have admired the piece. “I’ve taken it to the quilt shows for years, and I carry it with me when I speak to groups,” she says. “People always admire it.”

The design, which is stitched in silk thread, is an exquisite work.

“I always think about how something made with so much love could easily have just disappeared,” Hokonson says. “It could have been lost.”