“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”

Perhaps God made the world this way:
piecemeal, parts fitting together exactly
as if meant for one another~
the unique, disparate and separate
joined together in glorious harmony.

The point of creation is
forever functional, yet full of love –
a blanket of warmth and security
for generations to come.

Our legacy is to preserve this
beauty arising from various scraps,
this broken stitched to broken
in a tapestry holy and whole.

~~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 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2021, 2022 and 2023 )