The Quilts Left Behind....and Re-discovered

When I was home two weeks ago, I went poking around the attic in our old and now empty farmhouse.  Underneath the attic stairs was a cubby hole, what I'd call a hobbit hole, in which we found several old quilts no doubt sewn by my grandmother Marion Fry Stripling (Bailey).   They'd not seen the light of day in who knows how long, with portions of them frayed, eaten or rotted away.   My grandmother was a N. Georgia mountain woman, so quilting would have been part of her heritage.   I'm wondering what to do with these quilts.  Portions of them are too beautiful to be thrown away.  If anyone can help me find someone to restore these quilts, or parts of them, I'd be grateful.   I'm offering the photographs I made of these too long ignored beauties.

A large hole in the center of this quilt's universe!

Stains and frays....

Time consumes even the most beautiful edges of our creations.

So much like a fireworks exhibition!

 
Though more lasting, if we take care of what women's hands have created.

A CRADLE OF GREEN

The Appalachian range has been called "the vegetation cradle of North America."

Our mountains also cradle some of the most beautiful waterfalls and creeks on the planet.

Watching the water slide over these rocks, I thought of silk flowing around a dancer's lithe body.

And the sky, how the trees reach up to it, as if chanting Look up, Look up!   And so I do.   And then down again to the cradle of earth from which this glorious green grows.