Feb. 26—Her quilts would only be on display for so long at her retirement home in Colorado Springs. With a visitor one recent afternoon, Ginger diLorenzo, 86, wasted no time.
No matter her walker and supplemental oxygen, her pace was determined down the hall. “Let’s go down here. You’ll see there’s quite a variety …”
Quite a variety, some 150 quilts, spanning a lifetime.
Quilts stitched with pictographs and pottery of the Southwest. Another with state flowers. Another with Hawaiian flowers. Japanese and Celtic emblems. A golfer. A diva. Airplanes and planets. Baby dolls and monsters.
Some of them three-dimensional. All colorful and mesmerizing, shapes layered upon shapes. All crafted by a steady hand and a tender heart.
Some made for herself — yearslong projects that hung at the state Capitol. But mostly for her family: her four children, eight grandchildren, two great grandchildren and brothers and sisters and in-laws around the country.
From their respective homes, the quilts came back to diLorenzo for this special display.
“This was really a dream,” she said. “I don’t know if I’ll ever see them all together again.”
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She’d see family and friends and other visitors during the display, showing and telling and covering a whole life in just the span of a hallway. Time goes like that.
Time goes like a quilt, stitch by stitch, hour by hour. In times good and bad, diLorenzo would quilt.
For the birth of her kids and her kids’ kids. For graduations and promotions and big moves. For celebrating.
“And for meditating really,” she said.
In 2016, for getting through heartbreak. Cancer took the love of her life, David.
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She took her fabric and needles and all to this retirement home and stayed busy. February’s display here coincided with what would’ve been her 62nd wedding anniversary.
And in the end, diLorenzo knew that the quilts were her legacy. And that her legacy was not meant to live here in this building, but rather in the homes of her loved ones.
And so off the quilts went. And off she went to her next project.
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