Gifts

When we left West Virginia, we were given several very meaningful gifts. One of them is here:

This quilt has a great story behind it. In the weeks before we left, I opened my closet at home with all of my sewing supplies and saw the several big boxes of quilting fabric that I had been keeping in there. I had been storing these pieces since the days that I quilted a few things in the early years of our marriage. The sad truth is that I don't quilt very much these days, and knew that I probably won't in the future. Due to this fact, I decided to pass my fabric pieces on to someone else, consoling myself with the fact that I would buy new fabric if I started quilting again. (I did the same thing to allow myself to give away the boys' baby clothes over six years ago, and so far I haven't bought any of those, either.)

I took the boxes of fabric up to the church building and put them in the lobby with a big sign on them saying "Free to a Good Home". I was delighted when I went back a week or so later and the boxes were cleaned out.

Well, unknown to me, a clever person at church (Karen) had the wonderful idea to take the pieces and make a quilt for our family as a going away gift. She enlisted a skilled church member (Donna) to make the quilt, and of course Donna did a wonderful job. As a part of the creating, people from church wrote messages and signed their names in the center blocks.

What a blessing. I love this quilt for several reasons:

1)It's a wonderful reminder of our Morgantown church family.

2)It's made by one of my favorite people, someone with whom I made many fond teaching memories. We had a great time being together, and I think we really understand each other - I would teach again with her in a minute.

3)This quilt is not only a church-memory quilt, it's also a creating-memory quilt for me. I look over at it right now while I type this, and see a blue fabric piece that I put into a transportation quilt for Jericho, and black starry piece that I used for a quilt for my brother and sister-and-law. Lots of these pieces my mother kindly brought me in Prague when I couldn't access any quilting stores at all, and lots of them I used in pieces that I made. (Plus, I obviously love the fabrics they chose for the quilt, because I picked them all!)

4)This quilt is a similar to one just like it that Jason's parents have when they left Morgantown 30+ years ago. Some of the same names on their quilt are also on ours, which is a wonderful legacy of a wonderful place.

Thanks for the wonderful gift, Morgantown friends. I truly love it.