This is the conclusion to my previous post, “Channeling Marge,” in which a Petaluma mother, Lori Boinski, surprised her daughter, Amy, by finishing a quilt that Amy and her grandmother Marge had begun 12 years ago.
When Amy came home to visit her parents last weekend, Lori lead her into her bedroom, then stood aside so Amy could see the quilt on the bed. “At first it didn’t register,” said Lori, “but then when it did, Amy burst into tears.” Lori cried just telling me the story, then I started crying, too.
Amy’s father (Marge’s son) smoothed the quilt with his hands and described how he had repaired Lori’s old sewing machine so she could sew the pieces, and Lori recounted her adventures in quiltmaking. Amy remembered sewing each house block with her grandmother, how she (Amy) had selected fabrics for each one, making sure there was a dog or a cow or a particular motif in each one. Grandmother and granddaughter spent many memorable hours together piecing the houses, and to see the finished quilt after so many years was enough to unleash a flood of emotions.
Amy told her mother that the quilt turned out exactly as she and Marge had envisioned it. “This is the best present you could ever give me,” she told Lori. Amy, now 25, has returned to her new home in San Diego, wrapped in her quilt, as if her grandmother is hugging her.
