The speaker looks back on her childish outlook on life when she was younger, pretending to be “chieftains/ and princesses,” looking at the world with nothing but wonder and awe, but only working towards a single small goal of inheriting the beautiful blanket. The poetic shift that occurs at line 13 moves the poem from a nostalgic memory of want for a beautiful blanket, to an understanding and realization that the simple patched quilt has much more to offer. The speaker states, “I’ve found a quilt/ I’d like to die under,” implying that she has found much more value in multiple aspects of her quilt. For example, the author’s imagery of the “six Van Dyke brown squares,/ two white ones, and one square/ the yellowbrown of Mama’s cheeks”