Today’s Patch Quilt
This morning my friend Ella of Ella’s Patch Quilts asked me to bring my camera to Church. She had made a patch quilt for a Church raffle and wanted a picture of the quilt with her and the winner of the raffle, one of the trustees of the Church. I said yes and took pictures of Ella and the winner with the patch quilt.
From Ella, over the years, I have learned about this African American art form of patch quilts passed on since the days of slavery. Slaves who could not afford the expensive quilts of their masters took old and odd patches of material and sewed them together to make a quilt. Patch quilts, like Ella’s, are still made with odd pieces of material, no longer from clothes, but new discarded patches of materials and sewn together, not by hand, but by machine to make a quilt. The art comes from the creator and her imagination. My wife and I have seen patch quilts one or both of us really like and others we did not care for. The beauty of the patch quilt, like abstract art, is in the eye of the beholder. Different patch quilts, gifts from Ella, can be found throughout our house, on our bed, couch and cup holders.
As my day went on, watching a football game, working in the garden, talking by phone to family and friends around the country, enjoy dinner with my wife and son, working on presentation on Gandhi and Ignatius and watching TV, I more deeply realized how our life is like a patch quilt, full of diverse events that sometimes come together in a meaningful way and sometimes just seem like a random collection.
I have posted before about Chaordic systems that blend chaos and order into harmonious existence. Some would say nature is like this. I say each day of life, like a patch quilt, is a coming together of different, sometime random, experiences. If we bring art to this collection of experience we can find order even in chaos. Life is like a patch quilt, rich with experiences challenging us to make them one and whole.
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