There exists in the quilting world something called cheater cloth. It earns no respect. The fabric is pre printed with the illusion of pieced work, like a log cabin or trip around the world. But the sewer does nothing more than tack it down with a batt and backing and calls it done. 

The magic of a genuine article comes from the effort of gathering hundreds or thousands of pieces, and patiently connecting them with a stream of threads. That is a quilt. 

The one hanging on the wall to my left is a Dresden Plate, and each is a circle of twenty wedges of greens and pinks. There are twenty plates in all, and the border is pieced with 176 more wedges, yellow and white. The quilt is from the thirties and is in terrific shape for being an octogenarian. I bought the top on ebay, then both sandwiched and hand quilted it with small stitches. The blue binding is scalloped, like a child's drawing of the ocean.

The quilt hanging on the wall on my right is a stained glass pattern and is arguably the most difficult one I have ever finished. Some of the thirty blocks include 152 pieces, and the fabric is a rainbow of batiks. I have no intention of selling it but if I did it would cost as much as my monthly mortgage. 

Marriage is a montage of separate moments. Some are simple, others complex. There are afternoons when nothing noteworthy transpired, and evenings when the most exciting aspect was an empty laundry basket. Tiny stitches, that compose a quilt of meaning.

Life with John is perhaps less dramatic than I first expected. Last night he helped me put stronger hardware on one of the coops. We crouched in the waning light, me holding the screws and trying to reassure the nervous chickens, while he attached a hinge and better hook to the door.

The night before there was another episode of our current show, which made me teary at the words Toby spoke to the president.  

"One can only hope."

But collectively those frames of life create something beautiful. Something that in eighty years will still be of deep value.