The Quilt by Art Fettig

Art Fettig - The Quilt
Art Fettig with Quilt from daughter Amy

Amy, my daughter in San Diego, a very busy bi-lingual BSN Senior Case Manager and a Blue Ribbon Award winning quilter extraordinaire, has created a wonderful quilt for me to wrap up in when I doze in my Lazy Boy rocker. She named it  “Growth Unlimited” .  What a memorable gift! What a blessing! What a labor of love. 

On a panel on the quilt she tells how I would walk down to the waterfall on the Kalamazoo River there in Battle Creek. There I would find a stone and toss it with a plunk, as far as I could throw it. The falling stone would come in contact with the topmost layer of the water and create echo rings around the entry point into the river. Ever enlarging ripples would  form, round and round, bigger and bigger as they spanned out. Then,  pushed by the current, they moved nearer the waterfall’s edge and passed over it into the abyss.  Just then I would say “I want to reach a million people with my words.” And then I would recite The Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi. 

Amy also lovingly dedicates the quilt to David Gregory Fettig, my son and her brother (2/18/60 to 3/21/16) whose shirts add the patchwork of colors sewn into blocks that form the ripple pattern on the front of the quilt with the Growth Unlimited (logo) tree formed with more blocks on the back.  

When I wrap myself up in the quilt I can feel all those ripples and  joyous memories of those struggling years of visiting that inspiring waterfall come back to me. 

Thank you Amy for such a gift chock-full of love.