My Mothers Pieced Quilts

Poem Summary
Lines 14 Acosta begins the poem at the most literal level, introducing the quilts and how they were used: for warmth against winter chill. Using a metaphor, she describes the quilts as weapons against pounding January winds, perhaps the way a young child would imagine them during the coldest of winter nights. Lines 57 Here the speaker of the poem explains the daily routine of waking up as a child under the colorful quilts. By describing them as October ripened, Acosta might be referring to those colors most associated with autumnred, brown, and orange. The speaker begins to remember how the cloth felt under hand; the sense of touch is one of the strongest triggers for memory. Note the word faces to describe the individual frames of cloth, the speaker is beginning to personify, or give life to, the inanimate quilt. Lines 812 Once the speaker of the poem remembers touching the covers, she also remembers wondering how the mother was able to make the quilt, a single fabric woven of many smaller pieces. These loose strips of fabric came from many different sources, each with its own nostalgic significance communion dresses, wedding gowns, nightclothes and dime store velvets. On a literal level, the quilt is sewn together from these many separate strips. Metaphorically, the speaker of the poem begins to suggest that the memories of those events are woven into the fabric as well. Lines 1315 Lines 1315 focus on the difficult process the mother took trying to take many mismatched and oddly shaped pieces and arrange them in a coherent pattern, much like a puzzle. Note the way the poems speaker describes how the mother positioned / balanced each piece, and Acosta herself uses one-word lines like individual pieces constructing a longer sentence, each line balanced atop the other. Lines 1619 Once the pieces were arranged, the mother wove them together with needle and thread, a thimble over her finger to avoid sticking herself. The verb-choice cemented perhaps adds a sense of permanence to the image that another, weaker, verb would not have. Lines 2022

Here the speaker focuses the details even further until the reader can see the individual thread being woven, the needles action reminding the speaker of a horse galloping. By remembering how the loose edges of fabric were tucked in by the mothers careful needle, the speaker also remembers how the mother would tuck in the kids before bed. Lines 2326 Lines 2326 return to specific descriptions of the individual fabric pieces, the mother working hard to make them fit together. Every scrap seems to tell its own story, from curtains in a house in Michigan, to a Santa fe work shirt. Each piece even reminds the speaker of the season he or she wore them. By relating these associations, the speaker might be commenting on how memory itself is pieced together, ragged scraps arranged together. Lines 2730 Here the mother is compared to a painter at a canvas, using the square patterns of the kitchen floor as a model. For the first time the reader sees the speaker as a child lounging on the mothers arm, watching the slow weaving. The young child is perhaps too young to sew, but the mother is still instructing him or her, staking out the plan. This scenes example perhaps emphasizes the importance of mother-daughter bonding from the poets own childhood. Lines 3132 With so many scraps of fabric to choose from, the mother had to decide not only what colors might fit well together, but the seasons and events with which each piece is associated as well. The Easter purple might clash with the red plaid, but the holiday fits well with the winter-going-into-spring season, for example. Lines 3334 In each square of fabric, it seems, the mother would even paint tiny scenes, the quilt a combination of many colors and shapes. Corpus Christi is Latin for body of Christ; the Roman Catholic holy day of Corpus Christi occurs in late May or early June, several weeks after Easter. The mother has to decide whether to include a patch in honor of some occasion associated with that time of year perhaps her wedding day. (The stress being placed on a simple eventmy father held your handsuggests that it has some greater significance; the gesture, the time of year, and the religious associations all subtly imply a marriage ceremony.) Lines 3536 In contrast to the fairly pleasant memories introduced thus far, in these lines the mother has to decide whether to include a scrap of a funeral dress in the quilt as well, shaping it into a black star. By mentioning the good memories as well as the painful, perhaps the speaker is reminding the reader that all memory and experience is a combined weaving of lights and darks, good times and bad. Lines 3740

Here the speaker moves from close description of the quilting process to more figurative language, helping lift the mother from her everyday hobby to something greater. The speaker calls the mother the river current, comparing her to a great force of nature able to shape mountains and valleys with its roaring water. Note, too, how the previous scenes that the mother sewed, though fairly simple in construction, are now quite intricate and difficult to craft: a boy reclining, a flying swallow. This implies the mother was very good at what she did, spending many hours perfecting her art. Lines 4145 Continuing to invent analogies for the mother, in these lines the speaker describes her as the master of an army of needles, charging across the cloth battlefield with her hands at the reins. Images like this perhaps help give power to a woman who really just made quilts in her kitchen, perhaps looked upon by many as just a simple hobby. To the child who grew up to be the speaker of the poem, though, this was a wonderful and important task, equal to that of masters and generals. A mosaic, as mentioned

My Mother Pieced Quilts

The poem, My Mother Pieced Quilts, by Teresa Palomo Acosta, focuses on the mothers talent for weaving memories out of old fabric that is otherwise useless. The cloth has come from many different sources, each with its own nostalgic significance-communion dresses, wedding gowns, nightclothes, and dime store velvets (Acosta, My Mother Pieced Quilts, Exploring Poetry, Explanation). Each loose strip of fabric reminds the narrator of her childhood memories-the good ones and the bad.

They were just meant as covers (line 1) says the narrator. However, the October ripened canvases (line 6) that the narrator awoke to each morning meant much more than a simple blanket to ward off chill, but instead, a scrapbook of the past. The speaker watches as the mother compiles this scrapbook of fabrics that have outlived their usefulness. By recalling how the loose edges of cloth were tucked in by the mothers needle, the speaker also remembers how the mother would tuck in the kids at bedtime (lines 21-22).

Each scrap seems to tell its own story, from curtains in a house in Michigan to a Santa Fe workshirt (line 25). All of the pieces remind the speaker of a time, place or season in which they were used. By relating these associations, the speaker is commenting on how memory itself is pieced together like ragged scraps (My Mother Pieced Quilts, Explanation).

The poem continues to identify the good memories that the mother causes by shaping together the pieces of fabric until it speaks of the black funeral dress (lines 35-36). The mother wore this somber black silk to her mothers funeral and includes a star-shaped scrap of it in one of her quilts. By mentioning the good memories as well as the painful, the speaker is reminding us that all memories and experiences are combined of lights and darks, good times and bad (Acosta, My Mother Pieced Quilts, Exploring Poetry, Explanation).

Near the end of the poem the speaker is overflowing with emotion at all of the painful and joyous memories that the mother evokes with her quilts. In the same way that the mother has sewn her quilts tightly to withstand the thrashings of twenty-five years, (line 51) the mother has also raised her children to be strong and to go through life without being worn down by the hard times. In the last lines we discover what is holding all of these marvelous quilts together: love (My Mother Pieced Quilts, Explanation). Evidently, the entire poem was a metaphor in which it compared a quilt made of a hodgepodge of fabric scraps to the memories of a lifetime. As this poem says in the very last line, the quilts sing on, which means that the blankets still tell the tales of the speakers existence to this day.