Quilts, Scraps, and a Church Being Re-Made

1 Corinthians 1:10–18

Quilts aren’t just blankets. They’re memory you can touch. They carry the warmth of hands that sewed them, the fragments of old stories, and the quiet truth that what’s been worn down can still become something beautiful.

I’ve always been an artistic person. I took sewing classes in high school, and I’ve never lost that love of making something with my hands. So when my mother-in-law invited me to a quilter’s retreat at Camp Living Waters, I was genuinely excited. It felt like the perfect combination of trying something new, sharing time with her, and enjoying the beauty of our church camp.

I showed up with what I had: a plastic Giant Eagle bag of fabric, fabric scissors, thread, and my sewing machine. Meanwhile, the other women--including my mother-in-law--were next level creators. You could tell they took their craft seriously. Some had machines that could be programmed to stitch patterns or embroidery. There were rotary cutting mats, special cutting tools, spools of thread lined up like paint colors, organized bins of fabric, wheeled suitcases just for transporting sewing machines. A few even brought their own tables and lamps like they were setting up studios.

I’ll be honest, I felt inferior at first. But not one of them made me feel small. I laughed at myself with them because you could see we were in different classes as far as the tools and materials we had. However, they weren’t judgmental in the least about my humble grocery bag and basic machine. (And in my defense, my sewing machine did have a cover and a handle, so I could carry it like a suitcase… which made me feel at least a little fancy.) They let me scavenge through their scraps, offered advice when I got stuck, and gently helped me learn as I went. I had this whole vision for a bookshelf-themed quilt design. I never did finish that quilt, and it’s packed away somewhere. But I will never forget the experience of it.

What struck me most wasn’t just the crafting. It was the community. As women finished their projects and held them up to show the room, we would all applaud. And some quilts came with stories… people they were made for, people they honored. One woman was turning her son’s old t-shirts from various events into a quilt to give him for college, stitching his childhood into something he could wrap around himself when he left home. Another quilt was being made as a lap blanket for a friend fighting cancer. In every thread, you could feel it: love makes things last. Love refuses to waste what matters. What a gift it was to share in their threads of care.

That’s the heart of quilting, really. It’s folk art. It’s resourcefulness. Historically, quilting wasn’t a luxury. It was often born of necessity, especially in communities that didn’t have the privilege of excess. Fabric was saved and repurposed. Clothing too worn to be used anymore was cut into squares, and the pieces became something new. Quilts carried scraps of a life: work shirts, dresses, aprons, baby clothes, Sunday best. A quilt could hold grief, joy, seasons, births, funerals, weddings. It could carry the “fabric of the past” into the future.

And yes, quilts also carry history in the broader sense. There is a well-known tradition that quilts were used as coded guides during the Underground Railroad, hung as signals or symbols to help enslaved people find safe passage toward freedom. While scholars debate exactly how widespread or formal that system was, what matters is that quilts absolutely belonged to that world, and they were part of the story of survival, strategy, and hope. Quilts represented more than comfort. They represented covering, protection, ingenuity, and the quiet work of liberation.

And honestly… that’s where the Spirit grabbed my attention this week as I think about the state of the Church as a whole. Especially as our church enters a season of prayer and discernment with another congregation in potentially sharing our building and the overlapping of our missions and ministries. This is our opportunity to not say I am this denomination or this church or of this background to one another but instead to say, I belong to Christ just like you!

Because when Paul writes to the church in Corinth, he’s writing to a community that is unraveling. They are pulling apart at the seams. “I belong to Paul.” “I belong to Apollos.” “I belong to Cephas.” “I belong to Christ.” (1 Corinthians 1:12) It’s not just disagreement. It’s division that has become integral to their identity in a way that put wedges between their shared life together. Their loyalties are stitched to personalities instead of to Jesus. Their pride is louder than their love. Their unity is fraying.

So Paul speaks firmly, but not because he wants control. He speaks like someone trying to save a garment from tearing beyond repair:

“I appeal to you… that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you.” (1 Corinthians 1:10)

And then Paul does something powerful. He doesn’t tell them to “get it together” for the sake of appearances. He doesn’t call them back to a perfect institution. He calls them back to the cross. Not the cross as a symbol for jewelry. Not the cross as an abstract doctrine. But the cross as the center of the Christian life, where ego dies and love rises.

Because the cross is the great equalizer. The cross strips away boasting. The cross shatters the fantasy that anyone is saved because they were smarter, better, more right, more spiritual, more holy. The cross tells the truth: that we are all in need of grace. And that grace is what makes us family.

Paul says, in effect: If the cross is true, then pride has no place here. If Jesus was broken for you, then you don’t get to keep breaking each other.

And this is where the quilt comes back in.

If the church is going to become what God intends in this moment of history, it’s going to require quilting work. Not just sewing the squares together in a pretty pattern for show but going deeper. We are not just to make the top cover, we need to put it to the rack. Which means running the thread through every layer so the whole thing can actually hold. It’s the difference between something decorative and something that can survive real weather.

Some people will stitch together a “top” and call it a day (like me at the quilting retreat). But quilting means you take the top layer, the batting, and the backing and you sew through it all. That’s what makes it strong. That’s what makes it lasting. That’s what makes it capable of warming someone when life gets cold.

And that kind of quilting is best done as community work. You put it on a large rack (often at church because some homes are not big enough for a full rack), and women gather. Hands steady. Stitch by stitch. Side by side. Conversation and prayer and laughter, even grief sometimes. Quilting also demands that those learning listen to those who are seasoned. If your stiches are not even or straight enough, those old timers will direct you to that handy dandy seam ripper.

I can’t help but believe that is exactly what God is doing with the church right now.

Because we are in a time where so much is shifting. Attendance patterns. Culture. Finances. Trust in institutions. The expectations people bring into church. The pain people carry in. The weariness. The loneliness. The anger. The trauma. We don’t get to pretend it isn’t real. God has been pulling at our seams for a while. Let us trust in the work of His hands and commit to participating in it.

I believe strongly that we all have a calling to take the fabric of the past, and not discard it in bitterness or nostalgia… but to reimagine it. Repurpose it. Let God take what has been torn, worn, and frayed, and stitch it into something new.

That doesn’t mean we throw away tradition. It means we ask:

What in our tradition is meant to keep people warm?

What was always meant to protect?

What was always meant to guide people to freedom? 

And what pieces no longer serve love, no longer serve mission, no longer serve the movement of Christ?

The church is not being called to survive by clinging harder. We are being called to become a quilt, not a competition. Paul isn’t writing to a church with no gifts. Corinth had gifts. They had energy. They had leadership. They had theology. What they lacked was love strong enough to hold. And love is the quilting thread of God.

So here’s the question for us, in this time and place:

What scraps from the past is God asking us to gather up, honor, and transform into something that can serve the future?

What parts of our story still carry warmth?

What pieces need reimagining?

Where do we need to stop boasting and start stitching?

Because God is still making something holy out of what’s been worn down. God still uses ordinary people and humble supplies. God still invites us to scavenge scraps and turn them into covering. God still takes what seems unfinished and says, I’m not done with that yet.

And when the church finally holds up what God is making, I pray we will do what those women did at that retreat: we will applaud. We will honor the stories. We will celebrate the love sewn into every stitch. We will recognize that this is what the Spirit does.

Not just to decorate our faith… but to make it strong enough to last.