Quilts Quilts and More Quilts

There have been books (other than how to...) written about quilts. I have never read any of them but I think I am beginning to understand why it makes me think so much about my life. Maybe God inspired women to make quilts so he could teach us things. This past year I have put together 4 quilts I think. I wrote about one of them in a previous blog. My best quilt was the one I made for my grandson. It is the most beautiful piece of work I think I have ever created. I felt so incredibly satisfied with it that I kept thanking God for the inspiration, the equipment etc.

But it is the quilt I just finished that made me think the most. This quilt was quite a learning experience. It is by no means a perfect quilt. I am not a perfectionist and will never be. This quilt was a kit as most of my quilts are (other than the baby quilt). Though it is a square, it is built on the diagonal instead of straight up and down. So you build from the corner down. It makes sewing it a bit more difficult because it has a way of stretching out of place. The top came out pretty nice considering I didn't use a walking foot, like I should have. I didn't want to just leave the top plain. I wanted to embroider this quilt. I decided it was too big to machine quilt it by hand so I found a lovely machine embroidery that would fit in the square. I must say it was quite a challenge to center the three layers in the embroidery hoop to machine embroider it. There are 69 squares in this quilt. Anyway, many of the squares are not centered perfectly. Then I picked another pattern for the rectangles. Again not all of them are centered either. To make a long story short, the short sashing is bunched up with the little string of embroidery and the large sashing has a most beautiful design but isn't perfect either. Yet, I would look at the quilt from afar and think it was pretty cool and as a whole not bad, actually pretty. I then thought about myself. I am like that quilt. I have so very many flaws. I am just like that quilt, bunched up in some areas and definitely not always aligned in God's will. There is so much for me to improve on and still learn. Yet, God looks at this quilt that is me. He sees the flaws but he looks at the big picture. He sees the quilt as though it was perfect and he loves me anyway. He loves me like the person who will receive will love it because that special person will know how hard I worked on it and how much love and passion and frustration went into making it.