Ladies at Sew Time in Ringgold turn sadness into quilt of memories

“Hello God, I called tonight just to talk a little while. I need a true friend who will listen to all my fears and trials. You see, I just can’t quite make it through a day just on my own. My babies are lost and I want to ask you to please keep them safe and sound, dry their tears, and give them strength for whatever fate they’re bound.”

Jamie Dean wrote those words in a journal she kept after three young children she had been fostering for over two years were moved from her home and placed somewhere else.

Dean says recovering from the loss of children she had poured her whole heart into has been a long, hard six-year road. “I’ve been stuck in the ‘ stages of grief’ that everyone who loses a loved one goes through,” she says.

But sometimes, says Dean, unexpected kindnesses encourage her and brighten her life. One of

those kindnesses occurred recently when Dean wandered into a shop in Ringgold called Sew Time.

“I got to talking to the wonderful ladies who own the shop,” says Dean. “I told

them I’d like to have some of my children’s clothes — they were all left behind — made into a rag quilt.”

What the ladies, Kathy Graham and Marilyn Leffler, at Sew Time did went above and beyond anything Dean could have imagined. Instead of a simple rag quilt, the ladies poured themselves into crafting a full-fledged quilt blending together pieces of the children’s clothing to tell a story, even incorporating hats, a vest and a little tie. Some of the quilt’s squares are a mixture of pieces of all three children’s clothing.

Graham says she and Leffler took around six months to make the quilt.

“Jamie brought us a big bin of clothing and we discussed which pieces to use. In the end we knew we had to use at least a small piece from everything — every piece of clothing held a memory.”

“These ladies took a simple request from what I’m sure they thought was a real basket case and took it upon themselves to make a true memorable masterpiece,” says Dean. “They didn’t know me. They didn’t have to take the care and hundreds of hours to do what they did. They did it for a stranger they saw was in deep pain.”

“I will forever be grateful and gladly stand in the shadow of humanity Kathy and Marilyn showed,” says Dean. “There are good people in this world. We really don’t have to look far to find them.”

Tamara Wolk is a reporter for The Catoosa County News in Ringgold, Ga., and Walker County Messenger in LaFayette, Ga.