The Quilt

I don't know how to tell the story of the
quilt.

There's much too much beauty and sadness.

All I can say is that Lea Ann found the squares for the quilt in an old suitcase of her mom's a few years ago while the whole family was clearing out her mom's house to move her into a rest home.

And that no one in her family wanted the squares--which were made by Lea Ann's grandmother Mabel Lea in the late 1930's in Cody, Wyoming when Mabel was really really poor and the world was about to change around her yet again--made Lea Ann so sad she decided to keep the squares herself.

The beautiful part is that the squares were made from the dresses of woman who were having their hemlines raised from the ankle to the knee, and Mabel kept the scraps and made the elegant little squares of them that became the quilt.

The sad and beautiful part is thinking of Mabel, working as a seamstress in a laundry in Cody, Wyoming, living in a little wooden shack in town, saving the scraps from the dresses she altered for the ladies of Cody to make something beautiful from them at night after work because we all need beauty in our lives.

Even more sad and much less beautiful is that no one in the family wanted the squares that Mabel had made so beautiful.

Even more beautiful is Lea Ann saving the squares and making them into the quilt which made her sad when she thought of her grandmother Mabel Lee making the beautiful squares that no one else wanted but her.