The Green Quilt

THE GREEN QUILT

That’s the thing with handmade items. They still have the person’s mark on them, and when you hold them, you feel less alone.
― Aimee Bender, The Color Master: Stories

For a great part of mankind’s history, the necessities of life consisted of items made by someone’s hands. Men and women made pottery to eat and cook in. People used wood to carve out tools and weapons. Women spun and wove cloth for clothing and household items like bedding. These were not merely crafts they enjoyed doing; this was necessary for survival. Reading about the virtues of the Proverbs 31 woman, one is reminded of the arduous task set before women of that day to care for her household. Some years ago, walking through the British Museum in London, a thought struck me as I looked at items made thousands of years ago by someone’s hands. As they made those items, it was doubtful they ever thought someone would be looking at what they had made and marvel at it thousands of years later.

Glancing around our homes, any of us can find the cherished things someone in our family history made. In a guest room stands the wooden hutch with glass doors my dad made, which now holds books and family memorabilia. There is the child’s chifferobe he made for my eldest son when he was born over forty years ago. Folded neatly in a plastic bin high up in a closet is a woven bed topper my great-grandmother made in the 1800s, so fragile we are afraid to move it. Out of all the cherished treasures one can find in my house, one item stands out from all the rest—the old green quilt my grandma Dollie made for me as a graduation gift. She made my sister a yellow one and me a green one from years of scraps she had accumulated in the typical star pattern of the day. Grandma Dollie was a sought-after quilter, and her quilts adorned the beds of many family and friends in her rural community. She fashioned most everything meticulously, either by hand or with her old Singer treadle sewing machine.

Down through the years, every family member has wrapped themselves in the warmth and security of that old green quilt at one time or another. When our children were sick, the first thing they asked for was that quilt. Somehow, wrapping themselves in it became the first step to getting better. As grandchildren entered the picture, the old green quilt was highly sought after during sleepovers and sicknesses. At times, one would think the quilt belonged in the medicine cabinet, for it had many more medicinal qualities than any other thing in it. My children, grandchildren, husband, and friends all benefited from the warmth and security of the old green quilt.

Our twenty-two-year-old grandson, Tristen, lived with us for a year and a half while finishing school and establishing himself in his first career job. Tristen knew all too well the comfort of Grandma Dollie’s quilt. Every day after school, from kindergarten until fifth grade, he stayed with me until his mother picked him up and would come into the house and often go right to where I kept the quilt. On the days he was sick and couldn’t go to school, he would snuggle on the couch wrapped in the quilt. At other times, the old green quilt, wrapped over chairs or ottomans, became a fort or a tent. He loved that quilt!

Preparing to move into an apartment, my grandson came to me and asked if he could take the old green quilt. I have to honestly say, I was trepidatious about letting go of it. After all, it had been a part of the family for over fifty years. Though I have inherited my mother’s other quilts and have a few in the house, they are not the same as the old green quilt. Remembering I am not a spring chicken, my days being more numbered than they had been, I wanted the quilt to live on many more years in a cherished state. I based my decision on one condition; if he ever did not want it anymore, he would return it to me if I was living. He looked me in the eyes and declared, “Nana, I will never NOT want this quilt.”

So I am sending the old green quilt off on the next phase of its journey. Who knows how long it will last or whose lives it will touch? Who knows the sicknesses it will cure or the comfort it will give? So long, treasured friend! With every stitch of love Grandma Dollie put into you fifty years ago, you have far surpassed her expectations. Here’s to many more years to be loved by others who will come after me. Long may you live!

And when the old green quilt has seen its last day and the wooden hutch has fallen apart, when the handmade things are no more, a legacy that’s not crafted by human hands continues. A legacy formed in the heart of grandmothers and grandfathers, mothers and fathers, passed down through generations; a legacy of hope and faith that no moth or rust can corrupt. When this fragile jar of clay has breathed its last, may this Godly treasure of hope and faith still shine through all the generations.

Proverbs 31:22 – She makes coverings for her bed; she is clothed in fine linen and purple. (NIV)