A quilt that folded time

I have been working on a quilt project, but it feels like more than a project. It feels like I’m touching time.  This was an autograph quilt from 1932, signed by women in my family and community, plus one man: my grandfather, George Gerald Miller, Senior. When those women and my granddad signed it, many were young—- about the age of some of our granddaughters. When I knew these wonderful women, they were the older ones of my childhood, the ones I loved, the ones whose names were familiar in our kitchens and our churches and all of our family talks. The quilt was created by our grandmother, Ma, Iona Marguerite Miller.

And now I am about the age that they were then; that’s hard to take; that’s impossible to believe, but I am. That is what moves me so much. It feels as if time has folded, like fabric, until the very corners of it touch.

My cousin Susan inherited this quilt when our grandmother passed away in 1976. Susan had kept it tucked away in a trunk for years, and she finally decided it was time to bring it out and share it. She said something profound that stayed with me: sometimes the parts are greater than the whole.

The first crunch of scissors in fabric hurt my heart a little; there was something powerful about the quilt as one piece. But she was right, too. Hidden away in a trunk, it was not being seen.. Shared out, it might begin to live again.

So we cut it apart.

Wow. That sounds harsher than it felt; it was not destruction. It was a way of giving the quilt back to the family in pieces so that it could be framed, displayed, remembered, and cherished. I think that was a wonderfully unselfish thing for my cousin Susan to do.

Our very most important core family blocks were divided with care. Susan kept our grandmother Iona‘s block, which was especially fitting since her daughter was named after Ma. Susan‘s mother, Opal, had made two blocks, so Susan kept one and gave one to her other daughter. Paula’s mother, Elizabeth, had also made two, and Paula gave those to her daughters. When we divided the remainder, Amanda Miller’s block landed in my stack, but Paula will soon have that block so that she has one to keep for herself. I kept the block signed by my grandfather George Gerald Miller, Senior. He was the only man on that quilt. Since my father was George Gerald Miller, Junior, that one felt especially right in my hands. Now these pieces are framed and beautiful, no longer folded away in the darkness. They are out where they can speak. Paula and Susan both made gorgeous quilt pictures for their daughters. We have given a few blocks away to  a few cousins and friends.

And this is not quite the end of the story. Soon these quilt blocks that are left, I hope, will be wrapped in tissue, accompanied by a poem or a short note, and tucked into cherry-printed mailers that look as though they were made for quilt scraps and family history. Some blocks already know where they belong. Others await investigation on the Internet, on family sites, on Find a Grave, or on many other sources. I designated a pretty butterfly- themed journal to this quest. Other blocks may have to be claimed. I like that thought – that after all these years, the names may still find their way home.

What stays with me most is this feeling that time is not always a straight line. Sometimes it folds like fabric; sometimes the corners touch. Sometimes a young woman signing her name in 1932 feels suddenly near to that older woman I once loved, and she seems impossibly close to the woman I am now.

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All that from a quilt. A little cloth. A handful of names. And almost a century folded into one pair of hands.Thank you, Susan..