A Wedding Gift

Although I cannot attend the wedding, it is an important one for me to make a quilt. One of the Brides is the 2nd Daughter of my high school friend.

I found this sweet pattern that makes up rainbow hearts from scraps. I look at the photo and think about re-doing one of the blocks and then decided it was going to be how it is going to be. They are all trimmed and ready for the same color frames as the next step. Then they will get a white border, and two other borders. I will put up more photos as it progresses.

I am extending all these steps at least half an inch so that the end result will be a little larger too. When I paired it with the RAINBOW BABY back, it is a perfect addition, and because that part is almost finished, it does mean less work so it can get shipped out on time. Exciting.

A lot of people like rainbows and some do not get that the rainbow color is one of the symbols LGBT folks chose to represent their diversity. As a two-sided quilt with the rainbow on both sides, this will be a sweet gift for the Lesbian couple.

With short conversations with my friend's Daughter, I have learned that she faces a fair amount of discrimination from closer family and friends. That is not really surprising and is almost an earmark for LGBT folk for as long as comings-out have happened. 

It is much harder for people close to any of us to accept something any of us does that goes against expectations we have for our families & culture, for our religions & politics, and for our education & values, for our health & dying. Change is never easy. Yet change is the one thing we can depend upon.

Sometimes I wish I had the energy to send simple messages to people, those I know & love, those who challenge me, and those in the public realm of taking action. I want to tell people that I support them, or that they challenge me to grow. Yet, sigh. I don't make the time.

This quilt is something I can do. Maybe it is for my high school friend who took her life decades ago and left her Daughters to face their lives alone. She left me too. I often think of how different my life might be had she stayed. Maybe the quilt is just there to say I accept her Daughter just the way she is and just for the lifestyle she has chosen. 

It is not just a quilt. It has meaning. It is made with love. Oh wait. All of the ones I make do.