Quilting the fabric of my life

It was Sunday dinner at my mom’s when she asked me to go look for a quilt that she thought was tucked in between the mattress and the antique coil springs of her guest bed.

Sure enough, Chuck and I found the buried treasure. We not only found one but two quilts. One in yellow prints. One in pink prints.

I carried them into the family room and my mom’s face lit up. “Oh you found the quilt that your dad’s mother made for him before she died when he was five AND the quilt that I made when I was seven.” Yes, seven.

Mom said that she would sit on the floor at her granny’s knee when she was quilting. As her granny would throw the pink fabric scraps onto the floor, my mom would pick them up and cut them into tiny squares and sew them together to make a block.

This quilt, filled with tiny stitches, took two years to complete. To look at this quilt you would never believe that it was made by a young girl not yet even in the double digits in age.

It was in quite good shape considering the fabric was over eighty years old. I think of the patience that she had. I think of the love that her granny had for her and her ten siblings.

10 girls, 1 boy.

Each girl was taught to quilt, crochet, churn milk into butter and make not only their food but their clothes from scratch. Vegetables from the summer garden were canned and would get them through the cold winters. This was the Great Depression. Everyone around them was poor. Some were just poorer.

The canning, the quilting and sewing were simply a way of life. A way of life that I now treasure.
That quilt will soon hang over an antique wooden ladder in my home. It is a bit frayed and worn. For me, that adds to its value.

A treasure is not how your bank account sees things, it’s how your heart sees them.
For me, my inheritance is not about money. It is about the handmade treasures tucked away that hold so much love in them.

Keep sending me on those treasure hunts, Mom, I know the generations to come will still feel the love that they hold.