Pieced Together with Love

Dear Gentle Soul,

It was truly a labor of love, the double wedding ring quilt pictured here, which my late mother presented to me as a gift at my bridal shower 25 years ago.  Each 2” x 2” square of that queen-size quilt, totaling 1,536 squares in all, was painstakingly pieced together by my mother’s unyielding, creative, patient, and loving hands.

What started as a pile of various remnants and scrap material left over from countless sewing and quilting projects culminated in this beautiful one-of-a-kind masterpiece that I will forever cherish.

There is much romance and folklore tied to the double wedding ring quilt, but my favorite is the belief that a marriage will be blessed if the newlywed couple sleeps under the double wedding ring quilt received as a wedding gift.  I was married to my charming husband Marcel for 18 years before he passed, and our marriage was indeed a blessed one, so perhaps there’s some truth to that belief. 

I came across the following poem when I was researching the history of quilting, and I thought I’d share it with you here:

Crazy Quilts

They do not make them any more,
For quilts are cheaper at the store
Than woman's labor, though a wife
Men think the cheapest thing in life.
But now and then a quilt is spread
Upon a quaint old walnut bed,
A crazy quilt of those old days
That I am old enough to praise.

Some women sewed these points and squares
Into a pattern like life's cares.
Here is a velvet that was strong,
The poplin that she wore so long,
A fragment from her daughter's dress,
Like her, a vanished loveliness;
Old patches of such things as these,
Old garments and old memories.

And what is life? A crazy quilt;
Sorrow and joy, and grace and guilt,
With here and there a square of blue
For some old happiness we knew;
And so the hand of time will take
The fragments of our lives and make,
Out of life's remnants, as they fall,
A thing of beauty, after all.

     by Douglas Malloch from The Romance of the Patchwork Quilt in America.         

The journey life takes us on can be similar to piecing together a quilt.  Each square marks an event and milestone in our lives. And if we are fortunate and blessed enough, when we near the end of our time here on earth, it will culminate in a beautiful masterpiece that was indeed “pieced together with love”.

Warmly,

Beth