Quilted Memories

When Noah passed away my beautiful (and very talented!) cousin Toni asked us what we thought about her making a quilt or something similar out of some of Noah's clothes. I loved the idea but Noah didn't really have any clothes that stood out to us as being his favourites.  It's probably because he had so many lovely clothes as it was hard to buy him anything else.

When Aaron passed away I thought straight away that I really wanted Toni to make me a quilt out of some of Aaron's favourite t-shirts.  He LOVED his t-shirts and was like a big teenager with the ones he wore.  He would often spot a new t-shirt in town or online and would go on about how much he wanted it, and always in the end I would just cave in and tell him to go buy it - even though he really didn't need another one, as he had way more clothes than anyone else in the house :)  His t-shirts always had huge prints all over them with all the things he loved - especially music and sports.

Toni was so amazing and came to pick up the t-shirts straight away and went to work on the huge project.   Toni usually likes to handstitch her quilts, but knew it would take a few months before it was finished, and she wanted to get it to me ASAP.  It was so nice to hear that Sarah from Patchworks Plus had offered to quilt it on her longarm machine (does it sound like I know what I'm talking about, as I actually don't! I'm just copying what Toni said on her blog :).  Thank you so much Sarah for your kindness.  I'm amazed every single day as to how generous and kind people have been over the last month.

Yesterday Toni and I caught up and I was so excited as I knew she had finished the quilt and would be bringing it.    It was so much nicer than I ever imagined.

I couldn't wait to get it home to put on the bed. She had made it the perfect size to fit on our king sized bed.

She even did a special surprise for me with the help of Simone, who had very sneakily gotten hold of a copy of Aaron's signature from the girls in the office at his school.  Toni then copied his signature and stiched it onto the quilt. It looked so cool and I recognised it straight away. She was so relieved as she was worried it wouldn't look like his signature.

She also made the boys a special keepsake each out of his t-shirts. They got to choose which one they wanted and what they wanted made.  Harri and Kobe chose a blanket to snuggle under and Jalen chose a cushion. They look so great and the boys love them.

Thank you Tone for such a beautiful and special keepsake. We treasure it so much and it brings back so many memories of what was going on at the time that he got certain t-shirts or just reminds us of all the things he loved so much. We love it, we love him and we love you!

p.s.  you can see some great pics of the quilt with more detail on Toni's blog post here.