I was thinking that the quilting theme went deeper than just being pieces to put together. In ch12 Grace speaks (to herself, to Dr Jordan she lies, which I take as significant) of wanting to make a Tree of Paradise pattern, but adapted to her own preferences. And she explains that it is "Tree" not "Trees" even when there are multiple trees in the quilt.
And later (Ch39):
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There is a quilt pattern called Lady of the Lake, which I thought was named for the poem; but I could never find any lady in the pattern, nor any lake. But now I saw that the boat was named for the poem, and the quilt was named for the boat; because it was a pinwheel design, which must have stood for the paddle going around. And I thought that things did make sense, and have a design to them, if you only pondered them long enough. And so perhaps it might be with recent events, which at the moment seemed to me entirely senseless; and finding out the reason for the quilt pattern was a lesson to me, to have faith.
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So with quilting we seem to have a confusion of names and patterns, perhaps not unlike this story of the murders. And the patterns, still named the same, will be adapted by the quilter to be and say what the quilter wishes. I assume this is how we are expected to view the story.
There is another quilt-quote from the near the very end (ch53) which I rather like, again because of Grace's rather interesting take on religion:
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The pattern of this quilt is called the Tree of Paradise, and whoever named that pattern said better than she knew, as the Bible does not say Trees. It says there were two different trees, the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge; but I believe there was only the one, and that the Fruit of Life and the Fruit of Good and Evil were the same. And if you ate of it you would die, but if you didn’t eat of it you would die also; although if you did eat of it, you would be less bone-ignorant by the time you got around to your death.
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