When we were there last year for the funeral, I secretly (with the help of Steven's sister) went through Bob's closet and picked out several of his old dress shirts.
My original intention was to use the shirts alone to make up a quilt for Linda. My thinking was that if she couldn't snuggle with him any more, she could at least snuggle up with his shirts. But as I was planning the quilt, I realized that perhaps I could bring Bob even closer to her, through images that represented aspects of the 50 years they spent together.
Here it is.
The images represent reading together, their house in VA, dancing, traveling the world, their family, their daily walks, Linda's church callings, the Washington, DC LDS temple, Bob's church callings, music and piano, motorcycle rides, and electronics/HAM radio (one of Bob's passions).
The appliqued squares are made of fabric scraps from my, my sister-in-law Hyde's, and my grandma Anne's collections. (Grandma Anne also got to be friends with Bob and Linda during our wedding.) The piece work and pockets are from Bob's shirts. I asked my mom at one point if she thought Linda would recognize the fabric. She said, "Well, she ironed it for 50 years!" Good point.
I was pretty proud of this motorcycle. Not bad for a girl, huh? But can I tell you how hard it is to find grey cotton prints?!?
Some detail work on the radio. Yes, the quilt took hours. And hours. And hours. But as cheesy as it may sound, it was not tedious when I thought of my love for my in-laws and the joy it would bring to Linda.
The family may be my favorite block. Fabric selections were based on their family portraits - it seems like at least one of the boys was always wearing funky striped pants, and nothing matched. Ah, the 70s and 80s.
One of the pockets, from a work shirt. I left the pockets open and functional; thought it would be fun to put things in them. (My mom would surely keep Kleenexes in there.)
I'm happy to say that my mother-in-law was able to open it on Dec. 5, the anniversary of Bob's death. Gracious person that she is, she loves it, and it makes me feel good that I was able to do something to make her feel happy and loved. I feel like I put everything I had into this quilt - all my artistic abilities, all my creativity, all the skills I learned from my mother, all my capacity for love and service. It felt good to try to be the kind of person who would do that, and helped me to become that person.
