Back in April of 2016, I wrote a post about this quilt top. I was struggling with the quilt, and the post was about how I took it to a Cincinnati Modern Quilt Guild meeting and the ladies there encouraged me to finish it. I got some encouraging comments about the quilt here, too, and one of them was from Kara, a dear friend since high school, who has been a supporter of my blog since the beginning.

Well, all that encouragement wasn’t enough to get me to finish the quilt quickly, but I did finish it. In fact, there was a bit of a push to get it done before I left for Wisconsin at the end of July this year. Because I decided to give the quilt to Kara.

That decision was easy after I learned a little lesson this spring. In April, another friend from high school, Lynn, died. She was my high school locker partner, we went to the same college, we took vacations together, and I was the maid of honor at her wedding. When I was in Wisconsin for her funeral, my Mom (an avid quilter) said she had always thought that, when the time came to give away her quilts, she would give a particular yellow and black one to Lynn because Lynn had liked it so much. And Mom was sad she couldn’t do that anymore.

Lynn’s death was a really crappy thing, and I have struggled to make sense of it. But if I can’t make sense of it, I guess I can at least learn from it. So Lynn’s death taught me this: Give the quilt. Show your love. Do it now.

So Kara got her quilt. It was a complete surprise, of course, since we hadn’t given each other gifts in years. It turns out Kara had inherited a quilt rack but didn’t have anything to put on it, so the quilt came in handy that way, too. Kara said this bright, quirky quilt reminds her of both me and Lynn. That works for me.