Sunday, August 9, 2015

Quilt of Valor for Tom

 I was very happy to present this Quilt of Valor to my cousin Tom at a family reunion last week.


I had been working on this quilt, on and off, for several years. You know how that goes. Once I finished Leo's QOV, I decided I needed to finish one for Tom, too. And you know how well I work under the pressure of a deadline!

I had a minor mishap while quilting the border and quilted through the tip of my machingers. At least it wasn't my actual finger!


I turned to my brother for help with the label. Tom has written a book about his experience in Vietnam, so most of the info came from there. He did not, however, earn a Bronze Star. I'm not sure how we got that wrong. I know a QOV label is supposed to just have the first name of the quiltmaker, but in this case, I thought it was fitting to include my full name. 


 My son, the Marine, presented the quilt to Tom while I read my presentation speech. Another cousin's son graduated from Marine Corps boot camp a few days ago.


Tom was totally surprised and rendered speechless, which is really saying something for a Martiniano and a prolific author. And, yes, our family is so big, we wear nametags!

3 comments:

margaret said...

such a labour of love from you and I can see from the photo he is a bit overcome by it all

Lesley Gilbert said...

A lovely quilt, a lovely story and lovely photo's - did I say everything was lovely? :)

Unknown said...

What a beautiful quilt, Tina, and what a sweet and generous thing to do.