Love Wins Quilt

Love Wins.

Love Wins.

Glennon Doyle Melton says so.

Over and over.

I have to believe her. I need to believe her, that truth teller and hope spreader that she is.

My Sister and I started a quilt as a wedding gift for my brother and his bride.

In 2006. 

Now it is 2015 and the quilt has been neatly folded in a cool vintage suitcase I found the other week.

My grandfather died in August of 2004 and we inherited some of his spiffy, trendy neckties. Sister and I thought we could incorporate them into the quilt. We chose colors and patterns based on those ties.

Something always came up or went down when we tried to work on that quilt. 

She and I had the history, the fabric, the sewing tools…and somehow…we couldn’t finish it.

It is now eight and a half years later.

EIGHT POINT FIVE.

I pulled the quilt top out, the thread, all of the handwritten notes, the scraps for the backing, and the batting that needed fluffing.

At the same time, I read some of Glennon’s web site about love winning.  About families blending.

Love is so big. So irritating, so persistent and relentless.

As is family.

Now, over 3,000 days later I have these pieces of the quilt I want to finish because love wins and because now, my brother and his bride are no longer together.

I still love that bride, even though they are divorced and there is newness and life and love and children and art in new directions. I love this new family too. It has to all work; it has to be big enough for all of this love, and not contained to my original weinie categories of who goes where and when and what for.

There is commitment to the hard work of loving every day. Which is part of being family.

Family.

FAMILY.

By blood or love or universe or God or Jesus or connection. I don’t know the answers to most all of this, but I believe that love wins.

It does.

I shook out that old quilt that has parts and squares and circles – old, ancient and new and stitched my hand sore all around it.

This quilt is full of family, memories, love, cups of coffee, tea, chardonnay, Serial podcasts, This American Life, TED Talks, Joyce Meyer, the BBC’s version of Hitchcock, and some Big Bang Theory.

There are thousands of stitches, rocking in and out, blessing and considering every member of this huge FAMILY we weave, web, and quilt together.

It is large and full of love, bigger than all of our understanding, because, I’ll type it again: 

Love wins.

Love Wins.

LOVE WINS. 

For all you lovely quilting techie picky pots, we machine-pieced the top and I hand quilted the layers. It is proper length for a king-sized bed and proper width for a double-sized bed. It is not up to form, that is if you measure and all your seams align. This is more of a pull and tuck and sew until it's finished kinda thing. Like my family. I love it.