Grandmother Bones has wound down like a clock. Gone are the tick and tock of her youth. Now she creaks when she hobbles, and she spends her days talking to her tired old bones as if they were her children, who also are old and scattered like dandelion seeds across the land.
So everyone in her village sets out to make her happy again. They bring her rich berry pies and make merry music to wake her sleeping feet. They carry stones like jewels to set in her windows and catch the afternoon sun, but the old woman does not tick or tock. Not even her husband can wind her up again.
It takes the ingenuity of a child to capture Grandmother Bones' imagination. The child hands her two small pieces of cloth, which Grandmother Bones accepts and sews together. So begins a quilt whose patches soon come from every corner of the earth and soon become the texture and pattern of prairie life itself.
