She brought it out into the sunlight from the flooded basement. She washed it again and again and presented it to me on my 40’th birthday.
“It was the last quilt your grandmother was working on before she passed,” my aunt said, wiping her hands on her apron, a pot roast bubbling in her kitchen.
“It’s not finished, but I thought you would like to have it.”
In that moment I felt the kind of love you feel when you’re a child. I knelt on the floor to study it like it was treasure. Patches of clothing from generations woven together by my grandmother as she sat by the window watching the birds...
A stranger at my door quickly became my friend as we sat at my dining room table and talked about restoring the quilt, chatting about family, relationships and grandmothers. She showed me the places to start. The tools to use. Her tone was patient and gentle. Sweet like a songbird. When she left I laid the quilt out on the floor and took OUT every stitch my grandmother had so carefully sewed IN so I could remove the moldy wool batting inside. I separated the front and back so we could make two quilts...one for each of my daughters. I pinned the patches back together exactly where my grandma had intended them to be and then handed it back to my new friend to sew them together again. All this work to save some old fabric....
The quilts came back beautiful and vibrant, cozy and smelling like sunshine and fabric softener. Prayed over. NEW. Pieces of my daughters clothing had been added to them...dresses when they were babies and special christmas pajamas. I can’t wait to give the girls these gifts.
My grandmother has made a handful of quilts and given them to family members across the globe. I have imagined her in her farmhouse working away on these blankets. Imagined her putting down the thread to have tea with my Grandfather or take a break to feed the barn cats. I hear her phone ringing with news of a new baby. See the butter tarts baking in her oven, and the plants growing in her kitchen to bring to a widow at church. She is there with a glass at the sink taking her pills and waiting for my sister to arrive for a weekend visit. She is watering her hydrangeas in the afternoon sun while grandpa works in his shop building boats. I see a buckets of blueberries waiting to be placed in the pies she’ll make, the cows mooing at her laundry strung across the clothes line in the mountain air. I imagine her putting her sewing in a basket by the bed before she kisses my grandfather goodnight by lamplight.
My dear Grandmother. Your memory is ALIVE when I think about these quilts and the sweetness of your ordinary days working on them.
Taking the stitches OUT of your quilt brought me closer to you, gave me time to think about you, appreciate you. And seeing them put back IN...reminds me of the redeeming beauty of the Lord’s work...how when we find ourselves in dark places, the damp and mold seeping in, making us feel unworthy, the Lord lifts us out into the light, and then begins the work of unravelling the lies of the world, stitching back TRUTH until we are NEW and beautiful and feel like we once again have something to offer. So yes, ALL this work to save some old fabric was worth it...there is so much beauty in restoring what was lost.
Thank you God...for taking us out of the dark and making us new....your people...a quilt of many colors blowing in the wind.
