Hats Off To You, Dad

My father, Steven A. Chinderle (SAC) passed away in 2007 with his family by his side. At the time I was 24 years old and I had never sewn anything in my life. In 2012, I created my first quilt and fell in love with quilting, sewing, and making everything I could out of anything I could find. I’ve always thought that my dad would have loved my creations as he was a hands-on person whether it was fixing a phone or building a car. In fact, he was an expert welder and my brother often referred to me as “the sewing welder” as the process reminded him of our beloved dad working in the garage.

I often wondered how I could honor my dad through my craft since his clothing was long gone. In 2018, I heard Improv Quilter Sherri Lynn Wood give her lecture about quilting and the bereavement process at QuiltCon in Pasadena. Her talk touched me and I made a mental note to ask my mom if she might have any clothing left that dad wore. To my surprise, before I could fill her in on Sherri’s lecture and ask my question, she told me she found dad’s hat collection in the closet. Talk about perfect timing!

How was I going to wrangle these hats into a quilt? I had no idea other than to get started. One of the hats had 3 duplicates so I figured that was low risk. I deconstructed the hat on my mother’s living room carpet.

Do you know the feeling when you are motivated but then lose momentum quickly after? Well, this happened to me. I could not bring myself to cut into the hats anymore. Instead, I sorted them, thought about the different logos and their meanings. I had many conversations with my mom and brother about each one. We laughed. We cried. We grieved. We celebrated his life.

When my Grandmother Marge passed away in December 2020, we looked through many boxes of photos and my dad wearing his hats kept surfacing. I knew I was almost ready to resume this project.

On July 10, 2021 - what would have been my Dad’s 67th birthday - I literally woke up out of bed with an idea for how to make a hat into a quilt block. After over 3 years of contemplation, I figured it out!

I used many of the parts of the deconstructed hat - the front, side, and back panels, as well as the inner sweat bands. The entire top of the quilt is made out of hat parts. On the hats my dad wore often I could smell him in the room while ironing. What. A. Trip!

In August, I began cutting into the Mobil hats which my dad wore quite often. He worked for Mobil for 29 years and I remember how hard he worked for our family; long hours, turnarounds, dangerous work. I hope his work buddies still alive will look at this quilt and remember good times.

September rolled around and I reached another landmark. 79 hat blocks + a my favorite hat on my head. I saved the best hat for last and it was the most sentimental one to take apart. My dad made this hat, or maybe embellished is a better word for it; he ironed the patch on it and pinned a pegasus pin over a spot that had what looks like a burn hole.

Before I sewed the top together, I made the difficult decision to sell the Monte Carlo that my dad wanted me to have. It was too hard to upkeep. I had a vision to take a photo of the hat quilt on the rather long hood so I decided to do that with the 80 blocks since I already decided the layout.

If you want to see more of how I made this quilt - including the back and binding - here is a video I compiled of my Instagram stories.

July 2022 - After a tough battle with cancer, I lost my dear brother Brad on July 20, 2022. He is now resting right next to my dad. The morning after the funeral, I woke up with an emptiness in my heart that I’m not sure I can articulate into words. It was the worst day of my life thus far. I felt a strong desire to submit this quilt into the Austin Area Quilt Guild QuiltFest 2022 at Palmer Events Center. Life is fleeting and I wanted to give this quilt, and my brother and dad, their moment to shine. That morning with the help of my cousin Kent, we wrote the 50 word description and submitted the entry. Couldn’t have done it without him by my side. I chose an idiom for the title. If you know me, you certainly know that I love idioms and collect them in a journal. In my view, there is no better title I could have selected.

September 23, 2022 - The quilt show is open! I wasn’t going to make it out until Saturday but I had already seen one photo sent to me by a good friend. Then, I had to get into an old hotmail email account for a strange and random reason. I finally get into the account and there were 10 emails but the last one was from my dad in 2005!

Then what happened next caused me to fall out of my chair.

Now, at this point you would think the story couldn’t get any better but it does! At the quilt show, there was quite a response to this quilt. While I was there on Saturday, I shared stories with people and heard stories about their loved ones, too. I didn’t win a Judge’s award but being able to share and connect with others was an award in itself. On Sunday I came back with my amazing husband Henry. I decided to wear my Dad’s hat shirt, and my brother’s pin and ring which was my father’s wedding ring that he wore after he passed. I told a few stories and then I heard the quilt get announced…IT WON VIEWER’S CHOICE!!! That right - Hats Off To You, Dad won the Viewer’s Choice award!

Thanks for reading about my hat journey! What I’ve learned through it all is that if you’ve lost someone dear, make sure to hold all the good memories close to your heart - whatever that looks like for you. For me it was making a hat quilt, for you it might be stories and pictures. However you memorialize your loved one, don’t ever let the memories wash away because our loved ones live through us by the stories we share.

All the love, Beth