Stitching together friendships in Nahant

NAHANT – When Richard E. Adamo died last year, his widow grieved and helped her children launch a foundation in their father?s memory, and then Jeanne Adamo gathered her friends around her and they began to stitch a quilt.The quilt – depicting the steps of the courthouse where Richard Adamo worked as a law librarian – will be raffled off sometime next year in his memory. Its stitches bind together friendships that date back decades and have endured life?s tests and triumphs.?We lost two of our members last year, one to cancer and one to an accident – we?re our own support group,” Molly Conlin said.Along with almost a dozen other Nahant residents, Adamo and Conlin – the group?s appointed teacher – meet monthly to work on their creations and, in Conlin?s words, “talk about everybody who isn?t here.”Conlin has quilted since the 1970s when, she said, there was great interest in creating quilts commemorating the nation?s 200th birthday. She made quilters out of friends and a quilting circle that counts as members Maureen Ward, Michelle Kirkman, Maryann Lermond, Lollie Ennis, Esther Johnson, Debbie Aliff, JoAnn DeIulis, and newcomer and Town Clerk Peggy Barile has been stitching for 14 years.?It?s a learning experience and it?s social,” said Lermond.The women work individually on quilts but they also pitch in on projects, using tools that look like oversized rulers and rotary cutters – a relatively modern quilting tool that makes precision work once done with pencils and scissors easier to perform.Quilts are stitched with three layers and vary in size. Cross-cultural and national borders are rooted in the ability to take cast-off fabric and convert it into something warm.?Every culture has its form of quilting,” Conlin said.Johnson said the slow precision that defines quilting, the exchange of ideas for adorning a half-completed quilt and the opportunity to honor the memory of someone such as Richard Adamo cements the quilters? friendships.?Lifetime friendships are formed through quilting,” said Johnson.