This is a photo of my first quilt. It is also a photo of my best friend, half an hour after her third baby was born. This quilt was a gift to her at her shower for her second baby - I hosted the shower and asked everyone invited to bring some fabric. Everyone chose fabric in burgandies, greens, mauves, and cream and it all went together so well! Like anything else new that I try, I had a grand idea in mind with no idea how to bring it to completion and I begged God for help and mercy every step of the way and scoured the internet for advice. I'm humbly grateful that this turned out to be a beautiful thing! She used it at the hospital during the birth of her second child, kept it on her bed at home after, brought it to the hospital to snuggle around me as I had my second child, and here we are all together in this photo.
Being a creative soul, I've spent my creativity in many efforts. Jewelry design, sketching, writing poetry and short stories; I've designed gardens and communities, sewn clothes, crocheted - something about taking raw materials or a paper and pencil and creating something beautiful that did not exist before has always brought me great satisfaction. It's thrilling to manipulate color, line, pattern, texture, theme - all the elements of design to create something simple or complex in beauty.
Being a passionate person, I've been passionate about all these efforts; but I recently realized that I am more happy, more satisfied, more excited about quilting than anything else I've ever done. It answers my drive to create, but it's more than that: it's enough.
When my heart warms with the greatest joy of my best friend bringing her first daughter into the world, when my heart aches for a friend facing a year of multiple surgeries and long recoveries, when my heart breaks for friends who have lost everything they have in a fire, when my heart is full of deep love and gratitude for my grandmother who taught me to sew, or when my heart swells but fails to find words to express the love I have for the people in my life and when it feels like I can't give or express enough what is in my heart, a quilt is enough.
It's the beauty in my heart expressed through design, the hard work of my hands, the many prayers prayed for that person as I work, and a beautiful thing that person can wrap around them and never forget how much I love them. I'm not a terribly materialistic person (all fabric puns set aside), but as much as any material thing can encourage and remind someone of love, I'm very happy that I can make a quilt.
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