Grandmother’s Flower Garden Quilt

With summer on a slow move towards the cozier days of fall and winter, is there a quilt project stirring in your heart? After all, where are we to channel our garden energy once tucked indoors by the weather? Is a gardener ever without a project piecing together curiosity, whim, beauty, and resourcefulness, all the while expressing his or her loving care?

Enjoy an excerpt from God’s Word for Gardeners Bible found in the Garden Work section, celebrating the legacies in Rooting in a story of a Flower Garden quilt.

I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.

Ephesians 3:17 – 18 NIV

Read: Ephesians 3:14 – 19
Fertilize with: Deuteronomy 7:7 – 9; Psalm 16:5 – 11; Romans 10:8 – 13
God’s love intends to root firmly in our hearts as we grow in our grasp of his fabulous hugeness and all that he intends to blossom and bear in our lives, a filled-to-brimming bushel basket of blessing (Ephesians 3:19). Our birthright, birth order, birthday — all of these are part of his choosing us (Deuteronomy 7:7 – 8), an inheritance secured and portioned for us (Psalm 16:5 – 6).

In all of us, there is a hunger, marrow deep, to know our heritage.

— Alex Haley, author of Roots: Saga of an American Family, 1976

Our family ties, family traits and family story will all come together in a precious and unique way, in treasured tales only we can tell, written on each of our hearts (2 Corinthians 3:3). Not only our lives but our lineage tells an even deeper, longer, wider view of God’s love, and reveals more of his intimate, guiding hand. One gardener tells this story:

I have an old “flower garden” quilt, a covering pieced together of hexagonal patches formed into diamond blocks. A yellow calico at each block’s center makes a busy impression of “flowers.” You may think is only natural for a garden writer to have, but what if I told you I didn’t choose this quilt, that it made its way to me?

It was a gift, made by loving hands for my grandmother by her aunt to celebrate Gramma’s cross-country visit back to Texas, to her father’s hometown, in 1952. My Gramma cherished her personal gift, eventually giving it to my mother, who has recently passed it on to me.

And since I now live in Texas and I write about the garden, it seems somehow this heirloom had a destiny, on a scale Aunt Jennie could never have imagined, blossoming from its deep rooting full circle.

This precious legacy roots wider across the family, as my cousin on my Dad’s side meticulously restored the frayed and threadbare pieces for me, also by her loving hands and her acclaimed knowledge and stewardship of antique quilts.

I am wrapped not merely in a cozy coverlet, but a legacy of gentle, patient love and diligent, quiet work, a symbol of the perseverance already established in our family, a heritage supporting me as I am involved in work requiring all of these qualities.

Prayer: O Lord, are you really this big, to watch a quilt move through a family over 60 years? To know the intimate details of our families, arranging them to come together in personally satisfying ways? Help me to grow lavishly rooted in your love, taking up my birthright, freeing me to cherish the precious pieces of the past that lead to my future in you.