We Are Quilted By Grace
A skillful quilter uses a variety of colors, selected materials, careful stitches, perseverance, and hours of work to produce a beautiful, quilted masterpiece. As skilled writers, we quilt with words, and our creative process is much the same. We pick a unifying theme rather than a block pattern to follow. We choose from a variety of words and stories instead of textures and fabrics. We lay out our ideas and edit and polish our compositions, much like a quilter cuts and pieces together cloth shapes into designs. When our wordsmithing is complete, we bind the pages together and our finished product is a book instead of an elaborate quilt. The labor of our love, Quilting Lessons, now graces many homes and lifts hearts.
Our devotional Quilting Lessons was borne out of our deep desire to speak to hearts about things in life that make a lasting and an eternal difference. We spent years working towards publication. Each step was like another quilt block stitched into our story. While we crafted our devotions, we attended numerous writers’ conferences, sharpening our skills by taking classes. We grew in our confidence to share our ideas with the editors we met. We clarified the direction of our dreams to write and speak. Even before publication, we began talking to groups from our devotions. With encouraging responses from our audiences, we kept writing and honing our talks.
After publishing our devotional, we attended numerous quilt and craft shows to share our book and line of quilt block notecards. If we could choose colors to illustrate the mood and feeling of these events, they would be vivid, bright, and happy hues! We were honored to talk and even pray with dozens of visitors and customers who stopped by our booth. We listened to women and men share of deep loss and struggle. We heard amazing stories from quiltmakers who created quilts for children in foster care, for veterans, and cancer patients. The love poured into these countless creations was palpable. Truly we found a warm and vibrant community among the quilt show vendors and participants.
Then came the pandemic of 2020 and everything came to a screeching halt. Our lives and for some, their livelihoods, experienced a tremendous, painful jolt. All our show commitments and speaking engagements were suddenly taken off the calendar, yet we so wanted a way to connect with you. Amazingly, in this season of enforced quiet and separation came the birth of our website. We met a talented web designer who brought to life our vision to create a place to connect with you. Quilted By Grace hopes to offer encouragement, build community, and share our devotional with new visitors, readers, and friends.
As we worked with our web designer, we investigated a domain name and we kept coming back to Quilted By Grace. Our desire to write together came from a shared passion to connect hearts to our loving God, the Master Quilter. Through our meditations in Quilting Lessons, we show how God longs to use the broken pieces of our lives by fashioning them into a living mosaic for His glory. Quilted By Grace encompasses the many different parts of who we are: authors, inspirational speakers, encouragers—and leaves room for growth for those aspects and potentialities within us we have not even begun to discover!
As we attended quilt exhibits with Quilting Lessons, we were touched to learn the backstory of an heirloom quilt finished by a group or a family member. Similarly, as we look back through our notes and drafts, the notion of a website has been around for years, rather like an unfinished quilt top left in a trunk. As with any creative endeavor, the hard part is persisting and holding on to that dream planted in the heart. It takes patience and vision to endure the waiting between the seed of an idea and the eventual harvest of the dream. It requires perseverance, faith, and grace for the long haul.
Our lives have been healed and refashioned by God’s grace in countless ways, literally quilted by grace. We pray that you will experience a personal touch, a made-just-for-you grace from the Master Quilter. We warmly welcome you to join us in our new online community—Quilted By Grace.