I’ve always loved the feel of quilts.

They keep me warm physically, warm me with the love with which they were stitched, and warm my heart with their beauty. Quilts display the creative talents of their makers and preserve family history. Besides delightfully covering our beds or gracing our walls they once guided slaves to freedom.

The library has many books about quilting: books for designing, piecing, or cutting quilts. Some specialize like Debbie Mumm’s “Quick Country Quilting” book or “Panels & Patchwork: Quick Quilts for Kids” by Janet Wecker-Frisch. “Spirits of the Cloth” by Carolyn Mazloomi is filled with the quilts and stories of contemporary African American quilters. In “Wearable Quilts,” Roselyn Gadia-Smitley demonstrates using traditional quilt patterns to make vests and jackets.

Some books are intended to help quilters such as Susan Delaney Mech’s “Rx for Quilters” that has tips for dealing with carpal tunnel, defeating age-related eye changes and healing sore fingers.

Helpful videos available through the library include “Patchwork quilts made easy” with Jean Wells, and “Lap Quilting with Georgia Bonesteel.”

“Free Stuff for Quilters on the Internet” by Judy Heim and Gloria Hansen helps quilters use resources not available to our mothers and grandmothers when they recycled scraps to keep the family warm.

If you search the Internet using “quilting” you will find vendors selling quilts, fabrics and aids plus gateways to free quilt patterns, and links to quilters who share quilting interests and passions.

Some of the library’s holdings about quilting are recreational like the video “How to Make an American Quilt” starring Wynona Ryder and the novel “The Pledge” by Jane Peart. Jennifer Chiaverini’s “Round Robin” is one of her Elm Creek quilt series. Earlene Fowler’s detective Benni Harper solves mysteries in novels that are titled with quilting pattern names such as “Irish Chain.”

The Muskogee Area Quilters’ Guild has wonderful quilts displayed in the Muskogee Public Library through March. You can even buy a raffle ticket to win a quilt; the drawing will be held April 12 at First Baptist Church.

Quilts preserve our family stories, keep us warm and delight us with their beauty.

Come by the library to learn to quilt, to enjoy stories about quilting and to see the gorgeous handwork of your friends and neighbors.