My niece Carla is a pretty amazing young lady.  Not only is she a skilled and compassionate licensed counselor in the schools she also manages to be a pretty amazing wife and mother to my great niece Harper.  In between working, taking care of the house and family and all the other things that young folks have scheduled today she also is very crafty.

She loves to crochet and has even made some pretty cool yarn chair leg cozies for our deck chairs.  They have made a huge difference because some of our chairs have lost the little rubber protector things on the bottom of the legs and they were scratching up our deck.  I sent her a picture and she went to town and created a bunch of colorful leg cozies.

When we were back in Ohio in December Carla texted me to find out when our flight was going out of Columbus and if there was a chance to meet up.  Of course we were thrilled to be able to do just that and Carla said she had a little something for us.

Now to the untrained eye this little heart may not look like much at all.  But to me it speaks volumes.  As you can tell it is part of something pretty old.  It was from a quilt that my Grandma Bonnie (of the famed Grandma Bonnie’s steno notebooks) had made years and years ago.  Carla had requested it when Grandma passed and she has had it for years.  She said that she and her husband always “fought” over who got to snuggle under the quilt.

Finally the quilt became too worn and weary to be used and she wanted to do something with it that was meaningful. So she cut it apart and made little hearts for all the women in the family who would love having a little piece of Grandma’s quilt.  Perfect idea.

My heart features the smiley face fabric that was used to make a dress and pinafore for me when i was younger. It was the perfect fabric for a little girl who was called “Smiley” by one of my dad’s parishioners.  The little red spots of yarn in between the fabric squares were the accents that tied the quilt together.  My grandma’s favorite color was red just like it is for me and my sister. Sometimes we inherit a love of things from our loved ones, don’t we?

So today as I look on this fabric heart of worn fabric I think of how much warmth that quilt brought over the years and all of the love that was associated with it and feel blessed.

What do you have that is a reminder of a loved one that might compare to my heart?  I would love to hear all about it in the comments. Don’t forget that we have a few more days to comment to help support Teresa and Dennis Gray’s mission trip to Honduras.  You can read all about that here.