42. Family Trees

If you are my age and you have two sons, it's a good bet that the only daughters you'll ever have will be the ones they choose. Suddenly this thought went from mere theoretical possibility to the reality of a serious contender for the first daughter-in-law! In loving my son, this new person in our lives captured our hearts, too. Before too long there was a two-year engagement (on the west coast) culminating in a wedding here on the east coast.

With a nice long lead time, my son and daughter-to-be gave me a gift: they asked me to make them a wedding quilt. I now had two years to procrastinate. Having free rein to do whatever I could dream up, my mind raced with possibilities and couldn't settle on anything except fall colors--the wedding would take place in mid-October, a favorite time of year. The venue for the wedding reception was all about walls full of windows looking out at a wonderful rustic autumn landscape. The one interior wall that didn't have windows was large, blank, and the perfect place to hang the wedding quilt as a backdrop for the head table. I wanted this quilt to be very special and to reflect something about their unique day. But it's daunting to set out to make something so meaningful: it can have a paralyzing effect and ultimately result in something pretty heavy-handed, and that's where I was headed. And then I had a dream.

Dreams do not usually guide my life. As a matter of fact I'm rarely even aware of my dreams, so this one was memorable, though it's much vaguer now than it was at the time (all my journals are strangely silent during this period of time--a lot was happening, and not all of it as joyful as the upcoming wedding!). But I do remember waking up with a complete and peaceful understanding that I did not need to be making a blockbuster show quilt, knowing fully that this quilt wasn't about me but about the joy of a wonderful event. If there were ever a case for expressing feelings, this was it, and I had to be willing to risk sentimentality in order to arrive at true sentiment. Requisitioning special fabrics from both families emphasized that this quilt was about love...families...joining families...joining family trees and all that good stuff, which led to the final structure of the quilt. But something was missing as I pieced the branches from old and new fabrics into three panels: leaves. I chose leaf-shaped buttons (which show up as small "spots" on the narrow panels in the photo on the right, above) and sewed them on, then printed many leaves on heavy card stock, cut them out and threaded them with ribbon. Guests at the wedding wrote their good wishes for the bride and groom and hung them on the buttons as pictured in the photo on the left, above. And despite the fact that the quilt doesn't go so well on a bed in a home where a cat and dog reside, and despite the fact that the paper leaves will probably never hang on that quilt again, and despite the fact that the quilt hasn't actually taken up residence in its owners' home (waiting for that home renovation with a large wall included?), it was a dream come true.