My Quilt

Can I just say I LOVE my quilt. No really. I could not love it more. My husband said, "Isn't it amazing that before you started (the Americana one over the summer) you couldn't even work your sewing machine, and now you've made an entire quilt." I think that sums it up. It's a "pinch me, I must be dreaming" sort of feeling that I actually made a quilt. You can't tell from the photo, but it is about 72" square-just right for 2 big people (or lots of little ones) to snuggle under, and backed with a yummy soft fleece blanket.

I have an extensive list of things I want to learn to do before I die, and making a quilt is one of them. I just feel like our grandmothers and great grandmothers could really DO so much that we have lost the ability to do. It's like we are, as a society, losing a beautiful culture of valuing handiwork. And more than that. We've lost our value in having a mother raise her own children. We've come to believe that having more, owning stuff, is more important than raising our own children, these beautiful gifts from God given to us to raise. Not given to us to give to others to raise. NO ONE will ever love and care for your children like you will. NO ONE.

It's so vitally important that we understand that, and more important that we value it enough to "sacrifice" the stuff money can buy and use that time to win the heart of the child. Mimi and I went to a Mother Daughter conference a while ago, and it was SO RICH with wisdom, I have not known where to start, but let me share this thought:

Let your kids know you think they are THE BEST kids in the world. If they don't get that encouragement from you, they WILL seek it somewhere else.

How scary is that? Do you want your child seeking to know they are valued? Do you want them turning to others to define their worth? Do you want them to grow up feeling that a life of owning stuff like a plasma screen TV was more important than a life that may involve the absence of cable TV, but DOES involve their mother's physical presence in their life ALL the time. Knowing she is there for them, encouraging them, loving them, as no one else can?

And that is why making my own quilt was important to me. It is like a thread running backward and forward through time sewing us all together. It is appreciating the work of the past generations of wonderful amazing women who gave selflessly for their families, learning to value and recreate that work and those ethics yourself, and then having acquired the skills, passing them on to your children so THEY can appreciate it for themselves. In fact, my next project is actually making a quilt WITH Mimi for her bed. We've picked out the fabric and the style, and I can't wait to get started. I want her to see the joy of producing beautiful things with her own hands. And I look forward to the time we will spend together doing it.

And, as I type, Scott is at the office with his daddy working along side him. Does it get any better than that? THIS is how we are called to live, THESE are the seeds we MUST sew if we want to reap children who love people and not stuff, love their God in a real and personal way, honor their parents as a wellspring of their hearts, not a grudging obligation.

Now I'm going to go, turn the AC down to freezing, and snuggle with my kids under our quilt-right after I finish the world's best omelet :-).