Wrapping up in a quilt made from these fragments is like receiving a hug from a certain time in someone’s life — high school, college, or a season on a close-knit soccer team — or from a loved one who has passed away. When her mother died in a car accident in early 2000, she made her first two memory quilts — one for herself, one for her twin sister — out of her mother’s T-shirts. Now, each of the Trammell children — Chad, now 24 and a dental student at the University of Washington; 18-year-old Melissa, a freshman at Pepperdine University; and 23-year-old Megan Brown, a Yakima teacher — have at least two quilts each. Most people — relatives, entire soccer teams, a mother whose 5-year-old died after injuries from a fall, an aunt whose nephew died in a trucking accident — have just one.

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