Taylored Memorial Creations

                 Our family was all about scouting—with Ed IV in Tiger Scouts, Cub Scouts, and then Boy Scouts, Ed was the Cubmaster for several years, Ellis was in Girl Scouts, and I was a Tiger Scout Coordinator one year, and a co-leader for the Girl Scout Troop for several years. “Scout” should have been our middle name! The cubmaster uniform Ed wore at scout events for several years, including pack meetings, pinewood derby races, marching in parades, and Blue and Gold banquets where he would lead the meeting and the songs. He enjoyed leading the scouts, perhaps foreshadowing his time as a pastor. I had hand sewed many of the patches onto his cubmaster shirt. Turning the shirt inside out easily revealed which ones I had sewn, versus the ones that were applied by machine. This shirt enveloped his body for several years while we lived in Iowa. The red and white numbered patches reflected his troop, the “Hawkeye Area Council, Iow...

                                After the t-shirt quilts, I thought about what I could do as an “Ed” memorial for my kids. One of the things I had remaining from my husband’s belongings was an old, wrinkled bag full of patches. Yes, you read that right, and yes, I wrote that right! A brown, paper lunch bag, wrinkled with decades of use. The bag, soft and wrinkled, contained a decade of Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) patches--every year beginning their first year at the EAA Air Show in Osh Kosh, Wisconsin, in 1975 through 1985. Ed’s family were big airplane “buffs”, and indeed, his dad had a pilot’s license for a long time. They would often regale everyone with stories of flying around the country back “in the day”. Ed’s family, every year, would camp out all week at Osh Kosh, for the big air show. His mom had quite the set-up with tents and a screen tent complete with a Coleman ...

Sorting through Ed’s t-shirts brought back a flood of memories of Ed wearing them. Years prior, I had made a t-shirt quilt from t-shirts he designed in the 80s and 90s. It was a beautiful quilt, but cutting all the shirts, sewing on the borders and sewing all the rows together took forever—or at least a couple of years. Then I sewed on two more borders, then pinning together the batting and the backing. Sewing that all together and then the quilt stitching. Next was the binding that rounded it all out. Okay, truthfully, I only did the top piece. The quilt spent years in a box that I would bring out occasionally to show people. I finally talked to a friend who taught a t-shirt quilt class and paid her to finish it. It was beautiful once it was done. Many years later my sister mentioned an organization called “Operation: Quiet Comfort”. This organization made rag quilts from jean materials that was cut in squares and then people signed each square with an encouraging message. They ...