How one family wove a dream into silk quilts

Determined to help their six-year-old son realize his dream of making a handmade silk quilt from scratch, Ruan Qian and her family transformed their apartment in Wuhan, Central China's Hubei province, into a makeshift sericulture workshop, raising 12,000 silkworms in their living room.

Over 64 demanding days, from April to June, the family of three completed every step of the traditional silk-making process. They hatched and fed the silkworms, watched them spin cocoons, then boiled, peeled and stretched the delicate fibers by hand. By early June, they had harvested about 1.5 kilograms of silk floss, enough to stitch two summer quilts.