When Lin passed away, we wanted to do something special for his kids. Give them something tangible to remember him. One of his boys was hanging on to a shirt of his, and this gave my sister Amber an idea. How about we make each of them a blanket out of his shirts. Lin had lots of shirts from the Provo Fire Dept and he always wore uniquely "Lin" shirts.
Now, my Mom is a great sewer, but Amber and I really have very little sewing ability, and close to NO quilting ability. But we took it on with the help of many others. We were able to figure out how big and how many squares we wanted, and that we could piece together different sizes. Here is us lining up the pieces.
It turned out with all of Lin's many shirts and fireman pants we had enough do do a quilt for his 4 kids, wife, my Mom and Dad, and us three siblings. We even put some shirts in that he had given us. Once they were pieced together, Amber's sis-in-law sewed all the pieces together and we began quilting 9 blankets:)
We had it set up in my Mom's living room, and her sweet neighbor taught us how to do it. Once the knots were tied, Aaron's Mom, Barbara, took over the huge task of binding them - ALL 9 of them. She is a fabulous seamstress! Aaron's sweet Grandma did one as well. Aaron's sister had a surger to get the edges together; and it broke with the weight of some of the pants! We got nearly all but 2 done by Christmas.
Giving them to his kids on Christmas Eve last year was great - they loved them. And now we each have a part of him to wrap around us. It was sort of therapeutic and a great way to think of Lin while doing something with love that we could share.
Here is mine, I love to snuggle in it when I read! The kids call it Lin's blanket:)
