Posted on 07/22/2005 3:59:14 AM PDT by GailA
Remembrance quilt The many faces of those who perished on 9/11 touch many hearts Wisconsin work on display here
By Erin Sullivan July 22, 2005
Lois Jarvis was sitting in her basement studio on Sept. 11, 2001, sewing sweet, smiling faces for greeting cards.
She's a deadline person and waited until the last minute to do the cards, which were being picked up the next day. She couldn't stop, so she kept working, crying and sewing as she watched the news of the terrorist attacks unfold.
As the World Trade Center towers fell, and thousands of people died, Jarvis -- in her Madison, Wis., home almost 1,000 miles from New York City -- felt their souls leaving.
Jarvis is a quilter and teaches classes at Madison Area Technical College and around the country. She expressed her feelings about 9/11 in the way she knew how.
She made a quilt.
It took her 90 hours. In the days following 9/11, families looking for their loved ones posted photos on the Internet. Jarvis and her husband, Tom Jarvis, downloaded more than 1,000 photos and printed them onto fabric. She used the photos in a
Lone Star pattern -- it's a star that looks like an explosion and is used by some Native American tribes as a burial blanket. Mathematically, the diamond pattern continues forever.
Jarvis likes that, because the effects of 9/11 also will ripple forever. She finished it Jan. 8, 2002.
Since then, the quilt has toured America -- from a frog festival in Missouri to a Louisiana quilting show.
It will be on display today and Saturday at the Fire Museum of Memphis and Sunday at Second Presbyterian Church.
Jarvis is in Memphis visiting her sister, Mariella Cook, who lives in Germantown.
More than 40,000 people have posted comments on Jarvis's Web site, loisjarvis quilts.com, and 2 million have looked at it.
Jarvis feels like a power above her guided her work. The photos printed grainy and gray, like the smoke.
At one edge of the star, she felt like the people in the photos were family. It turns out two of the girls were sisters, both killed in the WTC. And one woman, whose married name was hyphenated, ended up on the quilt twice.
When Jarvis read the woman's obituary, she found out the woman was pregnant, so it seems to make sense.
Of all the places the quilt has been, New York City's not among them. Jarvis talked to a woman from New Jersey who said it's still too soon, the wounds are too raw.
-- Erin Sullivan: 529-5880
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9/11 Quilt
The quilt will be on display from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. today and Saturday at the Fire Museum of Memphis, 118 Adams.
The museum's phone is 320-5650. Sunday, the quilt will be at Second Presbyterian Church, 4055 Poplar, from noon until 5 p.m. That number is 454-0034.
For more information or to contact Lois Jarvis, go to www.loisjarvisquilts.com.
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England's new KING ARTHUR
America's Hero of the new MELLINNIUM
911 Lifesaving Hero RICK RESCORLA
http://www.RickRescorla.com
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