Like a fading piece of cloth
I am a failure

No longer do I cover tables filled with food and laughter
My seams are frayed my hems falling my strength no longer able
To hold the hot and cold

I wish for those first days
When just woven I could keep water
From seeping through
Repelled stains with the tightness of my weave
Dazzled the sunlight with my
Reflection

I grow old though pleased with my memories
The tasks I can no longer complete
Are balanced by the love of the tasks gone past

I offer no apology only
this plea:

When I am frayed and strained and drizzle at the end
Please someone cut a square and put me in a quilt
That I might keep some child warm

And some old person with no one else to talk to
Will hear my whispers

And cuddle
near
~Nikki Giovanni “Quilts”

I make them warm to keep my family from freezing;
I make them beautiful to keep my heart from breaking.
–From the journal of a prairie woman, 1870

To keep a husband and five children warm,
she quilts them covers thick as drifts against
the door. Through every fleshy square white threads
needle their almost invisible tracks; her hours
count each small suture that holds together
the raw-cut, uncolored edges of her life.
She pieces each one beautiful, and summer bright
to thaw her frozen soul. Under her fingers
the scraps grow to green birds and purple
improbable leaves; deeper than calico, her mid-winter
mind bursts into flowers. She watches them unfold
between the double stars, the wedding rings.
~Luci Shaw “Quiltmaker”

When I no longer have strength
or the usefulness to perform my daily tasks,
piece me up and sew me into a greater whole
along with pieces of others who are also fading.

We are so much better together,
so much more colorful and bold,
becoming art and function in our fraying state.

Full of warmth and beauty and fun
covering all who sleep and love and cuddle,
or in their frailty may drift off to heaven on a quilt-cloud
as their last breath is breathed.

~~click each quilt to enlarge and admire the handiwork~~

thank you again to the talented quilters displaying their art at the NW Washington Fair in Lynden
(see previous years’ work here, here, here, here, here, and here )