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WAYWO Finding Healing and Renewal with a Sholach Quilt [1]
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Date: 2025-02-16
Do you knit? crochet? sew? make jewelry? do metal (or other) sculpting? build furniture? create with your hands and heart?
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I saw this quilt in a previous WAYWO article and decided to try to make one for my brother undergoing treatment for esophageal cancer. To avoid making the assumption that he might want something like this, I sent him a picture and asked if he could use it when he recovered from reconstructive surgery anticipated for February 2025. He replied, “I would love to have it! I’ll love you forever!”
A few weeks later the supplies I ordered arrived and I started learning how to make the “Overlay Mosaic Crochet” pattern. Being a new resident of an apartment in a remodeled old school, I decided to join a group of like-minded residents meeting in the community room on Friday evenings for “Hooks & Needles,” a weekly get-together for all things using hooks & needles.
Starting the project required making a chain of 196 stitches in a room filled with conversation, and other distractions. After three attempts and one woman helping me count the stitches, I finally got the count right!
The next day, my sister in law and my nephew called to me let me know that my brother had caught an infection and died.
Well, I thought, I’ll just finish the quilt and donate it somewhere. But a month later, at the memorial service, as I talked with my nephew, I said, “I have an awkward question.” He put his arm around my shoulder and told me to ask. I started to explain about the quilt, and he interrupted me to say, “I would love to have it!”
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, eh?
So I continued to work about three rows a day, sometimes ripping out parts of a row to correct a mistake. Once the pattern became well established, I could complete a row in about fifteen minutes. The instructions consisted of a grid marking the two stitches used, single or double crochet, and written instructions for those who preferred them. I followed the grid.
Although the Mary Maxim pattern looks complicated, the pattern uses alternating rows of only two colors, one of which is variegated. After completing the quilt, I trimmed the two edges where I changed colors into one-inch fringe, but didn’t like the unfinished look, so I decided to crochet a double border to enclose the fringe. I liked the way that turned out, especially on the cute rounded corners.
I mailed the quilt to my nephew on Wednesday with a note thanking him for enthusiastically accepting my offer and explaining how much healing I experienced in the process of working on it. From thinking of my brother snuggled up in the quilt as he recovered from surgery to imagining my nephew, his wife and their two-year-old son snuggling under it together or making blanket forts, my sadness and powerlessness transformed to a sense of acceptance that the universe is unfolding as it should.
My nephew received the quilt Saturday and he and his wife loved it. Their son wanted to build a fort right away and called it “my beautiful blue fort.”
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[1] Url:
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