A new friend visited my condo for the first time last week and I, of course, gave her an extensive tour of the entire 960 square feet. In the bedroom, she saw a Cathedral Window quilt and said, “That looks like an heirloom.”
Actually, I have four generations of family-made quilts stashed around the place. The one she commented on is the only one I made, and the last one I would have considered an heirloom.
I started making the quilt in 1976, right before Doug and I got married, jumped into a Ford Econoline van and hit the road for a year. In all 48 continental states plus Mexico and Canada, I worked on that quilt. Scraps of fabric from shirts, pajamas, skirts, robes, even a purse – all sewn by my mother, my sister and me — made their way into the quilt.
The quilt was supposed to become a bedspread. But around 1980, the project stalled and the quilt officially became a wall hanging. Quite a comedown from the noble purpose of bedspread.
Shortly after Doug took a position at The Charlotte Observer, the paper announced its annual arts and crafts show for employees and family. On a whim, I entered the quilt. Afterward, I started second-guessing myself. I kept imagining how pathetic that unfinished quilt would look beside all the really cool stuff made by other, talented people. The day they were hanging the show in the lobby, I drove downtown to the Observer to pull it from the show so I wouldn’t embarrass myself.
When I arrived in the Observer lobby, I was too late. The quilt had already been hung. Hanging beside it was the Best of Show ribbon.
I’m not often speechless. In those days I was rarely teary-eyed. That day, I was both.
Decades later, I moved into a townhome. My incredibly talented artist friend Elizabeth Bradford saw the quilt and suggested that I hang it over the 70-year-old four-poster bed that had been my grandmother’s. When I moved again, two years ago, the quilt went into a plastic storage tub and under a new bed with a cheap brushed metal headboard that I liked for its sleek, modern look.
This spring I was away for a week and left my condo in the capable hands of an artist of another type, Christina Lewis with The Redesign Company. When I returned home and made my way through the condo, I was stunned to find that Christina and her crew had draped the well-traveled Cathedral Window quilt over the metal headboard. Once again, the quilt had been give a place of honor.
In the 20 years since the quilt won its award, I’ve become a sentimental sap. Once again, I had tears in my eyes.
No great message here. Just scraps of moments pieced together into a sweet little story about a quilt that I keep trying to dismiss and others keep telling me is more than I imagine.
