Special Gifts for Special Occasions

The tradition of a community coming together to create a very special gift for one of its members has taken different forms in different cultures. Some Lopezians have been quietly growing a new version, gathering to make commemorative blankets for friends who are marking a milestone in their lives.

A landmark birthday, the birth of a child, or a coming-of-age may be celebrated with a gift of a Northwest Coast-style button blanket, made of felt and sprinkled with luminous mother-of-pearl buttons. The blankets are designed and hand-stitched by Pamela Maresten, Irene Skyriver, and friends. Most recently a blanket was presented to Aimee Nassoiy on the occasion of her fiftieth birthday.

Maresten said the button blanket carries a powerful sense of identity and responsibility. The Lopez blanket-makers share a profound respect for the Northwest tribes and their traditions, and are sensitive to how their borrowing of a Native tradition might be seen by others.

“We’re not trying to be Native people,” Maresten said. “We’re trying to stay clear on our purpose: it’s to honor people.”

Maresten said she has lived on Lopez for so long that she finds it easy to see where traditional symbols such as ravens and orcas come from. However, she pointed out, quite a few of the blankets have only non-Native American symbols, such as the Sufi winged heart on the blanket made for Rosie Sumner or the giraffe chosen for Polly Ham’s blanket.

Maresten said that making a blanket with a future event in mind “helps to keep us on track,” and that it’s rewarding to make a blanket with someone in mind and then experience their reaction. “Every person has been deeply touched,” she said.

The button blankets are akin to the friendship quilts made by women of past generations (and still made today). The first Lopez blanket was started after Irene Skyriver, who is Native American, asked Maresten to help her make a blanket for her father’s birthday.

The two women looked through books on the Northwest Coast people and came up with a design that today Maresten calls “pretty crude, but beautiful.”

A blanket represents a substantial outlay of cash, about $200, and countless hours of handsewing. Donations are accepted from friends to pay for the materials.

Making a blanket involves many days and evenings of friends gathering to work, their heads bent over their stitching. “It provides a focus for our coming together,” Maresten said. “It literally weaves a social fabric, and we’ve felt something deep and ancestral in creating art together.”

Maresten said she and her friends can manage to make one or at most two blankets a year, but there are a lot of people she’d like to see get one as a gift, so she would love to have more people take up the torch, or in this case, the needle.

“Someday, when I’m an old lady,” she said, “I’d like to see all these people standing on a beach with a quilt or shawl or blanket that was made for them. It’s a tremendous expression of love.”

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