It's one of those where I found the pattern in a magazine, and then started to save scraps for it to make as a beginner ender quilt. One where you start and end each seam of your "real" quilt with a scrap so that you don't have long thread tails, and when you've been playing for a while, you've got a bunch of scrappy blocks made!
So I've been working on these blocks for a long time, finally got them put together into a quilt top for charity, but it's turn for quilting didn't come up for a time.
On Jan. 31, 2016 my friend Judith posted on Facebook that that day would have been the 54th birthday of her younger son Tom. That was the day I loaded this quilt onto the machine, and started to quilt it, in Tom's honor. Tom was a police officer with the City of Portland who was killed in the line of duty.
A few weeks earlier I had accosted an officer while out biking and asked if officers in general would like to have the quilts that I make to carry in their cars to give to people who need them in a crisis. So, that's where my police quilts will go now, directly to the officers.
I made up a note to pin to the quilt, explaining the significance behind the quilt. I had planned to give it to the staff in the precinct, but the building was closed for the holiday. I ended up leaving the quilt with the note up on top of a police car outside of the precinct. I figure that between Tom and Dad, they got it into the right hands.
So, new monthly policy. First quilt of each month goes to the police, and extras for what would have been Tom's and Dad's birthdays. Also July 21st, the day they both died, although in different years.
Like Tom, this quilt is quite bright. Although Tom wasn't a bright dresser, he was quite intelligent, so that's the connection there. Our friend Grace suggested that Tom needed "Garanimals" clothing for adults. The ones where the little kids only need to match the animal in the label to know that their clothes matched. Tom had no fashion sense, and joked that one of the best reasons for being a police officer is that his clothes always matched, and he got to carry a weapon!
The backing of this quilt is grey, like the "Police" outfit I made him for his SCA gatherings. I think that he would have appreciated that.
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