Hunting for a Memory

No, I wasn’t on a safari, just a trip to a fabric shop. But this isn’t just any fabric store. This store has everything – everywhere. There are aisles and aisles of every kind of fabric imaginable. The fabric is stacked two high on both sides. It is then stacked on top of that and in front of each side on the floor making it so you sometimes have to go sideways just to get down an aisle. It’s hard work finding just what you want here, easier if you weren’t trying to find something specific, but today I am. I’m hunting for more reproduction fabric, reminiscent of that used by my grandmother to make everyone of her children, grandchildren, and I suppose a good many of her great-grandchildren, their very own special quilt. Now these weren’t the artful quilts that you see today. No elegant patterns here.
Just made with love for generations to pass down.

I think of the quilts I’ll make. Not fine or fancy, just cozy, becoming more beautiful as they age. Being used with love. That does it you know. Repeated washings, a little fraying, getting faded, like people… aging beautifully.

The quilt pictured above is just one of the many quilts my maternal Grandmother made.

Copyright © 2005 Deborah Sharp Loeb