Loose Ends – Enduring Acts of Love
Hats for babies, epic quilts, blankets for loved ones — what happens to our unfinished crafts when we die or can no longer work on them? Loose Ends is an international charity that connects volunteer crafters with these projects, creating a special kind of magic.
Beneath the framed portraits of her smiling children in Katy Sharpe’s living room, draped over the sofa, is a cosy blanket that her mother began knitting a few years ago. It’s a calm sequence of black, grey and white, big enough for everyone to snuggle under. But although Katy’s mum, Jenny, began it as a gift for her, it was finished by someone she’d never met — Jenny died before she could complete it.
Katy, 35, is the director of a media agency and lives with her young family in the outskirts of Nottingham, central England. Her mum, who had learned to knit from her own mother, was a keen baker and crafter, but knitting was special to her: “Every night watching the TV, she'd be sat knitting: comedy dolls for friends, blankets, cardigans — anything she could lay her hands on!”
Jenny had completed nearly two-thirds of the blanket for Katy, her youngest daughter, before she laid down her needles for the last time. Diagnosed with a brain tumour in summer 2019, Jenny died a short while later, in early December.
“Then her knitting sat still for a long time. It stayed in my mum and dad’s house, in her little knitting basket by the sofa, and I kept thinking about it,” says Katy. She didn’t feel up to taking on the task of completing it, both in terms of the emotional significance and the skills required: “I knew I wouldn’t do a good job. And I wanted to — I wanted it to be something that I could keep for a long, long time.” A turning point came this year, “and that’s when I heard about Loose Ends.”
A Gesture of Love
As crafters, we know that when we start making something special — a sweater for a baby not yet born, a cosy hat for a partner, a quilt for a child’s new home — it is a gesture of our love. But illness or death can mean these gestures are left unfinished, with no one knowing what do with the pile of stitches and materials. Thanks to Loose Ends, a US-based charity, who pair unfinished projects with people who have the skills and time to complete them, there is now a way to resolve this particular kind of grief and guilt.
Katy saw the charity on a TV programme: “I’d thought I could ask someone to help or to teach me what to do. But it was never top priority. So when I saw Loose Ends on the TV, I said: ‘I need to get in touch with these people.’”
Just six days later, Loose Ends linked her up with Kathryn Tuddenham, 60, a volunteer finisher and accountant by trade who lives just a couple of miles away. Kathryn came to visit, Katy handed over her mum’s basket of knitting, and less than a month later Kathryn returned with the finished blanket. It was an emotional day, says Katy. “Kathryn had gone out of her way to help me, out of the kindness of her heart. What might have felt like a simple thing for her was an amazing thing for me.”
Where it all began
And this all happened because of two American women: Jen Simonic and Masey Kaplan. Friends since their university days, they are avid crafters and had occasionally finished projects for friends who had lost their mothers. “We knew it felt really good to do that, to bring a little bit of closure to the process of grieving,” says Masey, 54, who lives in Falmouth, Maine, 3,000 miles away from Jen, 54, in Seattle, Washington. “And it occurred to us that it would be really interesting to see if other people would like to do this for each other.”
Two years ago, they were helping a friend with her mum’s unfinished blankets, and the time seemed right. They combined their skills, built a website (looseends.org), posted pictures of the projects on social media and Loose Ends was born.
Currently, the majority of the participants are in the US, but there are now volunteers in 64 countries, and more than 27,000 volunteers in total, ranging from 13 years old to 96. They offer more than 31 different skills — as well as knitting and crochet there’s weaving, rug-making, lace and quilting. Loose Ends has logged 1,200 completed projects, with about the same number again in progress. The private Facebook group for finishers has 11,000 members, with another 400 or so joining every week.
Finishers outnumber the potential projects by about 12:1 but that works well for them, says Masey. “The more people that sign up, the better chance we have when a project pops up. They can be matched locally and maybe even walk to see each other, instead of putting it in the mail, because putting stuff in the mail is scary” — because this isn’t just ordinary post, but labours of love.
Complete and perfect are not the same
Jen and Masey say they’ve had to learn as much about grief as about craft, with emotional rollercoasters in every new email. But they have had to be pragmatic about how to resolve situations. “Half the time, when I’m dealing with a finisher or project owner, I ask: ‘what would make this complete for you?’ Because complete and perfect are not the same,” says Jen.
She describes an intricate intarsia sweater, covered in tulips: “It just screamed 1980s. Even though the person wanted it done, there was no way they were going to wear it.” So they discussed it with the finisher, and the completed back panel became the centre of a baby blanket. Projects don’t always run as smoothly: the volunteer may have to pass the project on (“life happens”, says Jen), or what appears to be a single blanket might turn out to be multiple ones, requiring more volunteers.
They have practical support from the US craft chain Joann’s, who donate supplies if projects run out and also have added the charity into its “round-up” programme, so that customers can round up their bills with the extra cents going to Loose Ends. This beneficial relationship is non-exclusive, and Loose Ends are looking for other partners, particularly in other countries as the project spreads worldwide.
Though they are a non-profit, they still have to be sustainable financially, and recently launched a major fundraising campaign “to hire the extra help we need and to create the tech we want — that’s the biggie”, says Masey. They want to reach people who don’t speak English, so being able to translate their website into as many different languages as possible is a priority, as is using algorithms to match up projects and finishers.
Traditions dreamt up
At the moment, people with unfinished projects and any potential finishers register on the Loose Ends website, with the team manually matching pairs up based on geography, skills and availability. The completed projects feature on their joyful social media, with every kind of needlecraft: baby garments finished to be worn by the original baby’s own children; cross-stitch projects begun during chemo; rugs put down when arthritis took over; a baptism blanket finished 50 years later. The most challenging projects are fine lace doilies: “They are taking a year or more to do if they’re in pieces, so we get four or five people on them at a time,” says Masey.
The volunteers and the project submitters may have nothing in common socially or politically except for the desire to get involved and the right match of project and skills. “We all experience loss, we all experience grief — we’re making a lot of connections that might not have been made,” says Jen.
The endeavour has also begun to take on a life of its own, with its own traditions dreamt up between participants, such as ways to highlight where the original crafter finished: little embroidered hearts, a tiny stitch on the WS or a change of colour, or a perfectly seamless transition. “In a way that is the end — but it’s also a beginning,” says Masey, “where a stranger has come in and expressed love to another stranger.”
More than just a blanket
Kathryn, who completed Katy’s blanket, signed up after seeing Loose Ends on Facebook. “I immediately knew this was something I wanted to be involved in,” she says. “I’ve always loved knitting, but I really didn’t need any more jumpers or cardigans myself, and I don’t have a family to knit for, so Loose Ends gave me the chance to do some knitting and help someone else out at the same time.”
She worked on the blanket in the evenings, in front of the TV, just as Jenny had done, taking particular care over every stitch. “This was something her mum had wanted to do for Katy, so I was conscious of what this might mean to her.”
Kathryn approached the project in a very thoughtful way, she says: “It’s important to remember that these projects were started by people who are no longer with us. There is more meaning to them than just a blanket, or a jumper, to the person who has asked you to do it, so you need to do your best.”
And she did. When Katy holds up her beloved blanket to the light, there’s no sign of where one knitter ended and the other began. “I kind of have a bit of an idea of where it kind of stopped,” she says. “But it’s just so well done.”
Creating something special
For anyone who is thinking of volunteering, Kathryn has a very clear message: “Do it! As a finisher, when I handed the blanket over, and left Katy’s, I felt so pleased that I had been able to do something for her and deliver something that her mum had started. It’s very rewarding to be able to help someone in this way.”
Katy agrees: “I wouldn’t have this blanket otherwise. And now it’s so special, full of memories. There’ll be lots of people out there with things that have been started and though you might think ‘it's only a blanket’, it’s not — this has so much meaning for me. If you have the skills to be a finisher and have the time to do this, then you can create something really special for somebody.”
These relationships are the true power behind the Loose Ends project, says Jen. “Yarn is nice, crafting is nice — but it’s a vehicle to connect people.” While acknowledging the male crafters involved, Jen also sees this as a way of honouring women’s work in manifesting their love in material form, “finishing their work and making the invisible seen”.
For those moved to join in with the Loose Ends project, you can submit a loved one’s unfinished project or sign up as a volunteer finisher (it can take a while to be matched up). In the meantime, you can download a flyer to post where craft groups meet, in yarn shops, libraries or in hospices — or simply donate to the fundraiser. And in doing so you can help spread the word about Loose Ends’ acts of love: captured in the generosity of a stranger in turning a beloved mother’s basket of unfinished knitting into a blanket full of warmth, solace and precious memories.
Text: Amelia Hodsdon
Photos: Joanne Crawford
This feature was first published in Laine issue 23.