Flower Gardens

More than forty years ago my Great Aunt Kate, who raised my mom and in my eyes was my grandmother, started a quilt.  For decades she had saved scraps from every piece of clothing she had made so she could someday make a quilt.  Over the course of years she cut small hexagons from the fabric and started making "flowers" for what I have named Kate's Flower Garden Quilt~

As she pieced the quilt she included single hexagons in various patterns among the flowers she'd sewn together~

The result was a colorful array of hexagons, some organized and some not, in an unfinished odd-shaped quilt top, which I inherited.  Aunt Kate had envisioned a quilt backed in lavender, so I bought a sheet in that color and stored it away with the quilt top for many years.  I just wasn't sure how to finish it off.  I don't remember when I pulled it out to see what I could do, but it was at least a dozen years ago, because I decided it made no sense to have something so dear to my late aunt stowed away in a dark closet.  I took pieces from one end and added them to one side to even up the size and shape.  I didn't want to lose the unique zig-zag edge so I hand stitched the top onto the sheet, the edges of the sheet folded under the quilt to create a pastel frame for the memories in fabric my dear aunt collected over decades~

I saved all the left-over pieces with the thought that someday I would find a creative way to join them together with other fabrics that held special meaning.  That day came three years ago when I was re-organizing my own stash of scraps and came across the fabrics I had saved from a quilt I made my daughter the year before. I sewed hexagon "flowers" onto brightly colored squares.   I also had several strips in those colors, as well as some salvaged strips of strawberry fabric from some unknown source saved solely because the pattern reminded me of Aunt Kate.  I put all of it aside until I pulled it out again last summer and laid it out on the living floor to see what could be done to bring it all together.  I remembered a large piece of fabric, that I bought so long ago I don't remember where it came from, that held all the same bright colors.  A second, smaller Kate's Flower Garden Quilt II came together.  This week I finished the hand quilting.  I think Aunt Kate would approve~    

The backing fabric is printed with the words of the song "Simple Gifts," a song we sang around the camp fire all the years Ken and I attended family camp with the kids at Pilgrim Lodge in West Gardiner, Maine.  According to Wikipedia, "Simple Gifts" was written by Elder Joseph Brackett in 1848 while he was at the Shaker community in Alfred, Maine. These are the lyrics to his one-verse song:

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free

'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,

'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gained,

To bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed,

To turn, turn will be our delight,

Till by turning, turning we come 'round right.