Did you know the term "embroidered patch" are two different things to a biker and a quilter? It's true, bikers typically think of military patches or club colors while quilters think of square blocks of fabric used to construct a quilt. But one upstate New York woman, desiring to honor her son who was a former U.S. Army veteran, decided to combine the two and create her own military-themed patch quilt.
She started by acquiring as many embroidered military patches as she could. She focused primarily on the Army as that was the branch of service her son served in. She purchased historical patches from World War II and Korea, modern patches commemorating more recent conflicts, and everything in between. She figured she'd need a couple of hundred patches to make her quilt work.
After more than a year spent finding those military patches, she set about sewing each one to a small piece of fabric -- all by hand! From there she attached the blocks to a larger piece of fabric and some batting, and sewed the entire thing together until she had a stunningly beautiful quilt. It was truly a labor of love meant to honor her son and his fellow soldiers.
Unfortunately, her son passed away in an accident before she had the quilt completed. Today the quilt hangs in memory on her living room wall, right next to a picture of him in his complete dress uniform.
I am intimately acquainted with that quilt because the woman who made it is my mother. My brother served in the U.S. Army in the late 1980s as a military policeman in Germany and Texas. That quilt my mother made is more than just a collection of military patches to us; it is a memorial to our fallen soldier.
