My mother-in-law said my quilt looks like a thrift store threw up on my bed—
and honestly, I’ve never been prouder of anything in my life.
It took me two years to make this thing. Every single square is a different fabric, stitched together from scraps of the life we’ve lived. The orange floral in the corner? My daughter’s first Easter dress. The dark blue paisley? My husband’s shirt from our very first date—the one with the torn pocket he refused to throw away. There’s a piece of my son’s old superhero pajamas, a faded curtain from our first apartment, even a bit of the tablecloth from our wedding reception.
When my mother-in-law came over last week, she took one look at it and said, “It’s very… busy, isn’t it?” You know that tone—the one that means *hideous but I’ll pretend I’m being polite.* She said her quilts are all coordinated and elegant, every piece planned. Mine, apparently, looks chaotic.
She’s right. It is chaotic. It’s colors that clash on purpose, seams that aren’t perfectly straight, memories that don’t quite fit together but somehow still belong in the same story. I learned to quilt from midnight YouTube tutorials, pricking my fingers until they bled because I couldn’t figure out how to use a thimble.
Her quilts sit in a linen closet, wrapped neatly in plastic. Mine lives on my bed—covered in dog hair, coffee stains, and the weight of every memory I stitched into it.
It might not match anything in the room. But every night when I pull it over me, it feels like home…