Quilting: an Apologetic

I have been quilting again. In the last two weeks I have made two toddler quilts, one for a dear friend who is expecting her first child (a boy) in January and one for my DD (pics and progress to come soon).  I have also spent a good deal of time researching and learning online. I have come across several blogs of quilters who have been amazed and inspired me!

All of this has me thinking: I LOVE quilting! For a lot of reasons, really. But largely I love the taking of something utilitarian (a blanket, to keep us warm, to cuddle and snuggle with, to provide comfort to my little girl) and making it beautiful. I love that I am leaving a piece of myself in this world for as long as thread and fabric hold together... and not just anything, but something meaningful and beautiful. Hopefully, at least. Haha.

To take the ordinary and make it beautiful.

What is this search for beauty? Why do I have this desire in me to make the things (and people) around me beautiful?

At one time I was much impressed by Arnold's line 'Nor does the being hungry prove that we have bread.' But surely tho' [while] it doesn't prove that one particular man will get food, it does prove that there is such a thing as food! i.e. if we were a species that didn't normally eat, weren't designed to eat, would we feel hungry? You say the materialist universe is 'ugly.' I wonder how you discovered that! If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it you don't feel at home there? Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always, or would not always, be purely aquatic creatures? Notice how we are perpetually surprised at Time. ('How time flies! Fancy John being grown-up and married! I can hardly believe it!') In heaven's name, why? Unless, indeed, there is something about us that is not temporal.

--C.S. Lewis

If I am looking for beauty, I am NOT guaranteed to find it. Maybe my next quilt will be hideous, haha! But there MUST be something Beautiful to be found!

But it goes further than that. If I am always looking for Beauty, then I must be meant to be part of the Beauty!

Ah, but we want so much more—something the books on aesthetics take little notice of. But the poets and the mythologies know all about it. We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.

--C.S. Lewis  

Resources for further study:
http://www.leithart.com/archives/001706.php
http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/desire.htm