I love quilts. Especially quilts that were handmade by grandmothers and great grandmothers in their quilting bee. They usually have wonderful stories woven in with the stitches and fabric scraps. An entire quilt can be made from fabric that had a former life. Warmth from repurposing. Quilting is, in my opinion, one of the few heirloom skills that is more prevalent than many others because of the rich history it supplies. I wish I knew how to make a quilt. I wish I owned one. But I do know how to make use of a quilt as a metaphor.
Olympia is my favorite patchwork quilt.
Beautifully rich in hues, fall sugar maple orange, heirloom tomato red, eggplant purple, the obligatory evergreen green, golden honey yellow, and every shade that exists within this earthy spectrum.
Each swatch has it's own political and social history, the cloth is never new.
It is made of some of the most unusual fabric-local and imported.
It is ever changing and shifting akin to the threadlike tributaries that erode and shape a hillside--slowly and subtly working their way over time but faster after an arduous or unceasing rain.
The stitching hints at a community that is at once unbreakable, and vulnerable to snags, time, and seam rippers.
I am newly part of this quilt and yet my heart feels as though a piece of it has been stitched in forever.
I believe that is what it means to feel at home when you are not near to what you've always called home.
I guess our hearts can be stitched into many quilts. Some we carry with us, others we leave where they should lay.
Which is both liberating and melancholy at the same time.
wow. what a great metaphor! this post could not have come at a better time. I was just sitting here thinking to myself how true your last three sentences are: "I guess our hearts can be stitched into many quilts. Some we carry with us, others we leave where they should lay. Which is both liberating and melancholy at the same time."
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