Today is National Make a Quilt Day and International Poetry Day. Poems and quilts, two of my favorite things, celebrated on the same day–wow. Shame of it is that I wasn’t aware of the importance of the day until this afternoon.

There was a time, years ago, when our breakfast nook was a sewing nook filled with patterns, fabric cut or stacked and ready for cutting. My one-time goal was to create two quilts simultaneously using the same traditional quilt blocks, one with traditional fabrics and one with bright, modern prints.

The reality of teaching high school English, raising two boys, and working on my masters degree didn’t leave much time for sewing. The fabrics were eventually packed away and the sewing nook became an office nook. Creative energies have a way of finding expression, though, and I began playing around with paper, ink, and stamps.

The pictured quilt is an Amish themed wall hanging that I quilted over 10 years ago, using the Sunshine and Shadow pattern. Amish quilts have always fascinated me, and I have a stash of books and solid color cotton fabrics in colors appropriate for making Amish quilts. I collected these items thinking that I would “get around” to making numerous quilts. I’m thinking that this week might be a great time to look through that stash of fabric and choose some for a simple quilt. No time like the present, as the old saying goes…

 

As for National Poetry Day, I will leave you with a poem by Emily Dickinson, my favorite poet.

 

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gales – heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of Me.

c. 1861