Quiltingboard Forums - A quilt for a stranger...so i thought!!!

A colleague of my good friend was gifted some music themed fabric on his 40th birthday years ago by his mom...she started a quilt for him and got a small strip done and became ill...she was unable to complete the quilt and last spring she passed away...her son took care of her during her last two years...his several other siblings were not around for this....

while cleaning out her belongings, feeling very sad, he found the fabric in a bag and decided to keep it for memory sake....he saw my friend hand piecing at work (I am teaching her to quilt) and he asked her if she could do something with the fabric for him.... Could she finish it....how much would it cost...hopefully not too much,etc etc...she said "I can't but my good friend and teacher maybe can" (thanks Ruth)

days later as he was boxing stuff up to give away, he found the few blocks mom has pieced...
he brought those too to my friend, all excited, who brought them to me...I agreed to make it for free...it would be my way of giving in the spirit of Christmas....I said to my friend that maybe one one something good would come back to us...

We found a pattern, something to go with the prices she has already made, I made the quilt, quilted it on my Longarm, with a beautiful pattern called Mozart...it just all came together so easily...I added a beautiful label, and called it Let it Be...Paul McCartney...song about his own mother whom he had lost...

I delivered it the week before Christmas...when I walked into the office and he came in, I knew I had seen him somewhere before...I told him he looked awfully familiar...I told him my last name and he named my three brothers and my parents...he had been a very close friend of my younger brother...

At this point he had no idea I was the quilt lady..

I said to him that the reason I was there was to see him...he looked surprised....and told him that a few weeks earlier our friend had brought me his fabric and I was the quilt lady and had completed the quilt started by his mother...and he nearly fell over...he was in shock and nearly cried when I showed it to him... I quilted his moms name into it and he loved it...and included the pieces his mother had sewn in the backing as they had been made by mom...

A few days later I received a beautiful Christmas card with a gift and a tear jerking letter, in which he disclosed to me that this was the darkest time of his life, with his family members giving him grief about his mom's estate, etc...and how he had lost faith in humankind...then he received this quilt, which he called the single most act of kindness in his lifetime and how he will never forget this and how it restored his faith in people,etc and how he will be buried with this quilt...wow!

Most incredible of all, the day I gave him this quilt happened to be HIS BIRTHDAY...he was sure this was his mother who was reaching out to him through us, telling him everything would be ok...what a birthday gift...!
He has since been in contact with my brother too...

A few days ago, I was cleaning out my sewing room and this ziplock bag fell to my feet...it was the scraps from the music quilt...I decided I could make a pillow and give it to my friend...as he mentioned that since he never married his mom had not made him stuff like she did for his siblings and their homes...one pillow turned into three pillows and then I found the strips of excess backing on the Longarm and turned that into a table runner...

The pillows....they were made with no pattern in mind...one at a time...one has one star, one has three stars....coincidence??? The pattern of the star was not obvious to me when I was piecing the quilt...only now did it become apparent

I know mom is smiling...And I am sure she had a hand in this...a mother will do anything for her son....lol

Here is my friend the day he received his quilt...