Wrapped Up in Love
A tribute to my mother’s life and the creation her burial quilt.
There is something deeply profound about the ‘bookends’ of our lives: the pivotal moments that mark the beginning and the end of someone’s existence on this Earth. Most of us are very comfortable with marking the birth of a child: publicly celebrating this moment and welcoming a new baby into a family, perhaps even commemorating this moment by creating the unique gift of a quilt to accompany that little person, throughout their life, as they grow. I think perhaps what we’re often less familiar with, is the act of marking the end of a person’s life in such a way. When I reflect on why we make a quilt for a baby, I think of a desire to wrap them up in love, enfolding them in soft, warm fabric to mirror the comfort we want to give by holding them safe. We also desire to create something to ‘voice’ in an unspoken way, how we’ve been holding them in our thoughts and minds for months; focusing our energy on their life to come and the joy we want to bring into it, with our use of colour, images and shapes. Fundamentally, creating for others is an expression of our love and care, demonstrated by the shear amount of time we are willing to invest in our labours (no pun intended)! And therefore, why should it be any different to show this same level of care at the end of a person’s life?
“…as my family and I prepared to honour my mum Patsy’s request to “take me home, to Sligo”...
...it struck me that I couldn’t ‘let her go’ without making one last thing for her! ”
And so, last March, as my family and I prepared to honour my mum, Patsy’s request, to “take me home, to Sligo” (back to the town on the West Coast of Ireland where she grew up) it struck me that I couldn’t ‘let her go’ without making one last thing for her! After so many years of knowing and loving someone; having shared so much with each other and having known her so deeply, it felt somehow even more important to me to be able to wrap my old mum up in love, and in the closest expression of a hug that I could, for one last time. Even though we were taking her ashes home to be interred alongside her parents Betty & Gerry, and two of her sisters, Frances & Deidre, it still saddened me to think of having to leave Ireland without her and that she’d stay ‘thar lear’ in another country once I’d flown back to my home in the UK. And, after 50 years of living in the same country as each other - especially after the recent years of caring so closely for my mum after losing our dad - I didn’t like the thought of her being ‘alone’ without her daughters near by. Also, as ridiculous as it might sound, I didn’t like the thought of her being cold in the darkness underground. So, that was when I decided to make a special burial quilt from the remnants of items of special significance, that I could wrap her up inside of, snug and safe and ‘warm’: embraced by soft fabrics that her hands (and my father’s) once held: nestled in the soft worn cloth of clothes she once wore.
I’d already designed and tested a prototype of the quilt block (based on a traditional Irish Chain Quilt), that I planned to make as a tribute quilt to honour ‘mo mhamaí’; her Irish heritage and her love of sewing. And so, using this pattern to create a very personal, bespoke version of it just for mum, was the obvious choice. And so, with only two days to spare before we were to fly from Southampton to Belfast and drive on to Sligo, I set about making my mother’s Burial Quilt. I sifted through keepsakes of old baby clothes; things mum had machine or hand-sewn for me or clothes she’d worn which held significant memories of her for me and began cutting. It felt a such special way to value our shared love of fabric and honour the sewing skills that she passed down to me and for which she was so well known and respected for in Sligo. It became my personal acknowledgement of her: a way of telling her without words that I saw what she valued and I remembered what she told me and did for me. I wanted to ‘show her’ how I truly knew who she was and that I’d understood what made her happy.
The fabrics in the block represented my mother’s love for her family and symbolised the genetic threads that run through us - from her mother, to her, to me & to my daughter.
It reminds me of the surprisingly profound quote from the goofy film ‘Space Cadet’ - “…my threads in your genetic quilt…”
Pale pink fabric - a remnant from a nightdress she’d made her mother that she’d kept in her bedside drawer until the end of her own life, such was the love she felt for her ‘mammy’.
Pale blue fabric - from a smock she’d made for me as a baby to protect my clothes at mealtimes. She’d laugh telling me how much I loved to squish my food between my fingers and how I’d be covered in it after my dinner!. I have a remnant of it that still has her annotations written with biro in her signature-style, messy handwriting.
American cotton with yellow flowers - from bedsheets gifted to her & my dad for their wedding by mum’s aunt in the States. Mum loved the sheets saying what high quality cotton they were and how lovely and cooling they were to use on hot summer nights.
White and red floral ‘cheesecloth’ fabric - from a summer dress mum made herself. When I pieced the squares of it into this block, I intentionally faced two pieces with her seam uppermost so the care she took to overlock the edges to prevent fraying, could be seen. Her attention to little details like this, hinting at her work flow and thought process.
Four little pieces of my dad’s hanky. Mum would boil wash these in an old pan of dad’s mother, and dad would spray starch them (tatty old ones folded into squares & newer ones to take to work, folded into triangles) when he ironed them. They were such creatures of habit!
Squares of Broderie Anglaise (or ‘English embroidery’ whitework) cotton which mum loved to use to sew details into our clothing. These pieces came from the edging to a baby dress she made for my sister, which I later wore. Mum also made our christening dress from Broderie Anglaise.
Bubblegum pink; the sherbet stripes plus the red/pink plaid - each from cotton lawn PJs mum bought and I’d ware on trips back home to Nottingham as an adult or she’d wear when staying at my house here in Bournemouth. I wore the pink pair when I was expecting my little girl in 2010.
M&S store label - a nod to how much mum LOVED to shop there (back when it was St Michael’s; then as Marks & Spencers and when Per Una was introduced).
Floral fabrics - from mum’s blouses (there were a lot!) she loved to dress smartly & enjoyed bright colours, especially pinks, purples and florals!
Little leaves - from a blouse I bought years ago in the Boxing Day sales with money mum gave me. She always complimented me wearing it.
Once the block was pieced, I basted it and backed it with the sweet pink floral smock mum wore in her final hours. Not a happy association if I’m honest, but arguably the MOST significant symbol of the profound moment when her light went out, and the energy within the very atoms of her being that made her alive, left her body. This clothing was also symbolic of the last phase of her life when she was brought low by complex dementia. Somehow the synthetic fabric of this smock mirrored the how dementia was an ‘artificial’ version of our mum, compared to the pure cottons, which represented who she really was and the full life she’d led: delicate, worn and faded like her elderly skin. I created the second panel using a Vatican flag that mum bought when she and dad’s aunt took my sister and I to a service by Pope John Paul II at Heaton Park in Manchester May 28th 1982, along with 250,000 people. I was 8 at the time and my sister was nearly 10. I remember the incredible experience of being part of such an enormous friendly crowd of people! Being Irish, my mother was raised as a Catholic but most importantly for her, was her drive to demonstrably care for others; to speak up for the oppressed; and practically ‘role up her sleeves’ and support people who were suffering. Like her mum before her, who made meals for needy families and invited people in when they needed help, my mum spent time supporting the homeless and visiting prisoners as well as running errands and making meals for the sick or housebound. This flag isn’t about religion but rather a nod to how she tried to live her faith and demonstrate treating others the way she wanted to be treated.
After basting the mini patchwork panels, I quilted them simply, using Amann buttonhole thread (left over from when mum worked as a dressmaker & tailoress for fashion designers, ‘Sligo Models’ in her youth, over 60 years ago). She’d brought them from Eíre to England when she moved over in the 1970s. She had SO many threads, continuing to use them as she made and mended clothes throughout my childhood. Years later, I took a few reels of these threads when I began sewing for my daughter: eventually taking all the remaining threads when we finally emptied our family home of 89 years, in 2024. Then finally, I sewed the quilted blocks together to create a boxy pouch into which we placed our mum ashes and tucked her up safe inside with a couple of personal items: not dissimilar to the practices from Ancient Egypt or modern day Tibet of wrapping their dead in burial shrouds; or how people throughout time buried their loved ones with ‘grave goods’: items of importance or usefulness for the next phase of their existence that signified status or provided comfort, just as the Anglo-Saxons or Vikings once did.
Growing up in a large family where my maternal granddad, uncles and cousin ran the family undertakers, speaking of death was (and still is) a very normal part of life. The Irish are very good at marking the transition of a loved one’s life on earth to the life beyond; paying respects to that person’s life and celebrating their rite of passage to the next life. And it’s not all doom and gloom either! At an Irish wake, laughter sits in happy company with tears of sorrow; and grief raises a glass of ‘the black stuff’ to life, in gratitude for the time you’ve had with your loved one. Funerals in Ireland are respectful and reflective; a time for prayer, blessings and remembrance and they’re a time of laughter and joy, sharing memories and funny anecdotes from a person’s lifetime with a ready smile or a warm embrace ever there for you when your voice might crack a little. There’s plenty of craic too and lots of recounting old stories: ample time for togetherness and sharing a drink (or three or four) and staying up talking into the wee hours: it all makes grief a little less painful and a lot less lonely: the memories of that time becoming threads in a new fabric, reconnecting you with your clann the ‘teaghlach agus talamh’ to which ultimately you belong. “Slán leat mo mhamai agus go raibh maith agat a chuisle mo chroi.”
At an Irish wake, laughter sits in happy company with tears of sorrow; and grief raises a glass of ‘the black stuff’ to life, in gratitude for having had a loved one grace your life.
