a magical blue fish quilt with heart

When I first moved to Washington D.C., Sue was one of the first friends I made.  We often laughed at how we quickly felt like "sisters" because we shared so many things: the same name, we lived within blocks of each other, we both were psychotherapists, and we shared such similar tastes in arts and crafts. One of the things that Sue was known for was her extensive collection of Blue Fish clothing, which I often admired.  Sue was a loving, accepting, and inclusive kind of person, generous with her time, her energy, and her kindnesses.

It was just a few years later that Sue was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, a dreadful disease that she fought valiantly.  As the disease progressed, Sue -- who had always been kind of zaftig, like me -- began to lose weight.  She told me often how beautiful she felt as she could fit into smaller and smaller sizes.  As she wasted, she passed on some of her "chubby clothes" to me, and one day, as she rested on her bed, she pointed me to 5 boxes, all packed with her beloved BlueFish outfits.  She asked me to take them home, keep the ones I wanted, and make the rest into a quilt for her.  I didn't have the heart to tell her that I'd never sewn on stretchy fabric before.

At home, I cut up most of Sue's clothes, saving all the painted bits, the labels, the buttons, and large pieces of the solid colors. On my design wall, I began to collage the painted images into a large quilt top, which I carefully sewed together.  The quilt back was constructed with large patches of solid color, and the quilt was tied with the beautiful and unique buttons from the clothes. The picture I include below shows us on the day I presented Sue with her quilt.  She was very happy, and had her husband hang the quilt just outside her bedroom.  Sue died two months later.

Sue's BlueFish Quilt was recently juried into a very special quilt show, called Sacred Threads, which hung art quilts with themes of love, grief, loss, and hope.  It has now come home to me, and I'm sending it on to Sue's daughter because both of us, whenever we see Blue Fish, think of our beloved Sue.