My mother was quite handy with a needle. She was a perfectionist. Her embroidery was tiny, intricate, and perfect. She used to drive me crazy when she sewed clothes. She basted every seam and ripped stitches out for the smallest mistakes that only her eyes could see.

When Mom was expecting my older brother, she embroidered some quilt squares with the state birds and flowers. She only did 45 or 46 of them. Then life got busy with babies and a sad, disappointing marriage and the squares got wrapped in tissue and tucked into the cedar chest. I found them 35 years later on a trip home and asked if I could have them to make a quilt. I knew nothing about quilting but I read Mother Earth News and fancied myself as some sort of earth mother. I gardened, baked my own bread, made yogurt and tofu by hand, and rode horses every afternoon in the summer and skied in the winter. I rocked in front of the fire in my log house in the Rockies and pieced my first quilt. By the time I got about a third done quilting it, I had a baby and in typical Gemini fashion, never went back to it.

At the beginning of this year when my living situation changed, my high school friend Ginny called me up and offered her home to me while she was away in Wyoming with her kids. Her apartment is located over her quilt shop in a two story brick Victorian. Ginny does long-arm quilting so I saw my opportunity to get this quilt finished. She carefully took out all my terribly uneven stitches, replacing the horrible puffy polyester batting, and came up with the perfect floral fabric for the backing. I went over yesterday and picked it up. And here it is…Mama’s Quilt.

Sixty-four years in the making. Stitched in West Virginia, toted to Colorado to be lovingly pieced together, dragged to different houses, stuffed in various closets, and…finally, toted BACK across the country only to be finished in Ohio by my high school friend. Around, around, around…a quilt is born.

And Mama smiles.

❤

“a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak,”.

Ecclesiastes 3:7