When Bob Thompson asked his granny years ago why she continued to create
so many of her beautiful quilts, she said it was the only way she could
reach across time, touching and giving her descendants her energy. And
just like his granny, Thompson's gift of storytelling provides a
reverence and buoyancy all its own. This collection combines personal
and family experiences to create a patchwork quilt of gripping stories
with the comfort of memory.
Thompson draws on his mother's seventy years of diaries, handwritten
notes, and recipe cards to reveal that every story, no matter how small,
has some wisdom to impart. He describes how, as a child, he would pass
his days on the front porch of his granny's country store in western
Kentucky and listen to regulars swap stories and spin yarns, which
cemented his passion for storytelling. His granny's methods of quilting
provide an interesting perspective on life: "She never hurried; her
stitches were small and even. Fascinated with numbers, I counted as many
as eight hundred per square and did the math, sixteen thousand for a
twin-bed-sized quilt! When I mentioned that some of Great-Grandmother
Brim's quilts had stitches so large that you could get your big toe
caught in them, Granny smiled and said, 'It's not the size of the
stitches that count, it's the spaces between them.'"
Thompson's poignant narratives of community, friends, and family impart
the significance of the quiet moments and meaningful spaces between
everyday events. In doing so, they demonstrate that there is something
to be gained from every human experience.
