A year and a half ago, my cousin Jessica lost her son to suicide. He was just 29 years old. When Jim & I got married, he was a sweet 12 year old kid in the background of photos, having fun on a trip with his mom. When Jake passed, Ada was just 4 months old. We tried to figure out a way for me to attend the services in New England, but it just wasn’t feasible with such a young baby who couldn’t receive a Covid vaccine yet. Since I couldn’t go and be there for my Jess, I offered to make her a memory quilt with some of Jake’s clothing, when she was ready for it.
Jess asked me to make 2 memory quilts, one for her, and one for Jake’s stepmother (who he remained close to), and sent me a box of Jake’s clothes, including a few button down/flannel shirts. As Jess lives on Cape Cod, and Jake grew up there on the water, I wanted something that would evoke joyful days out on the ocean there, so the pattern is Regatta. Because I was making 2 quilts, and only had 4 woven shirts to work with, I decided to use Jake’s shirts for just the sails. That way they would stand out in the quilt. I used a pale grey-on-white texture for the background, and some blue batiks for the water, borders, and binding. All the fabrics came from Joann’s. (Apologies, I’m just now realizing I only got pictures of one of the two, and they were different, but highly similar.)
At the bottom of the box was one of the cards given out at Jake’s service, which included a traditional blessing between sailors. May you have fair winds, and following seas. It is used both to mean ‘good journey’, and also in remembrance of those sailors who have passed on. I knew that I wanted to include it in some way within the quilt, so I reached out to the amazing and generous @audiobooklover, for help creating a machine embroidery file that I could stitch out and use in one of the blocks. She put this file together for me, and after a little trial and error, I got it stitched up. (Full name blurred for privacy.)
Due to an accident of construction (ie not planning out exactly how I wanted each boat/sail combination to be facing), I ended up with two highly similar, but slightly different quilts. One had the embroidered patch top right, and the other bottom right, and a few ships were going in different directions, etc. But beyond that, I wanted each quilt to be unique to the recipient, and I do believe in the importance of labeling quilts with pertinent data for future owners & quilt historians, so I created a specific label for Jess’, and for Barbara’s quilts. These were just done straight from the embroidery machine itself, using the text feature. (Also, apologies, I’m just noticing now how bad the white fabric looks in photos. It has a light grey/white crosshatch pattern that doesn’t seem to photograph well.)
The box of clothes also included Jake’s Coast Guard uniform shirt, and a thick wool shirt he used to wear when working for a tree service. I didn’t think the wool would mix well with the quilting cotton, and I couldn’t bear to cut his uniform into a lot of little pieces, so I made two shirt pillows from those.
As I was finishing the quilts, I learned that Jake’s best friend just had a daughter, and had named her Jacoba, in his honor. I was able to use the sleeves of one of the shirts to make two Lovey’s for Jacoba. I used the leftover minky and ribbons from making Ada’s Loveys, and embroidered her name with my embroidery machine. I made two because if your baby likes something, you don’t want to risk losing the one and only copy, so her parents will always have a spare.
These all took many months to get through, as they were very emotionally heavy to work on, so I took breaks when I needed to. But I am truly pleased with how they came out. They have been sent off to Jess and Jake’s stepmom. Jess loves them and the pillows, and has even sent me a few pictures of Jacoba cuddling her new Lovey.
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