Loving Stitches Piece Together Memorial Quilt

The loved ones of Jeffrey Pascone labored weeks to finish a quilt bordered by black velvet and tapestry as an outlet for their grief and a way to honor the 40-year-old man who died in July of an AIDS-related disease.

“It’s hard to bury a child,” said Pascone’s mother, Lee Delorme, 61, as she lifted her hands to cover her eyes.

Delorme, Pascone’s lover, Thomas Andrews, and his friends Corky Johnson and son, Kyle, placed the final touches on their quilt last week at Johnson’s Westlake home. They completed it in time for Andrews to take it to Washington, D.C., to be part of the largest AIDS memorial quilt ever assembled.

Finishing the piece represents an end to three years of struggle with the disease and a tribute to Pascone, said Andrews, 36, who was Pascone’s companion for almost nine years. “It’s a sense of closure for us to do something in history not only for him but with the 40,000 other people who shared the same type of experience.”

About 400,000 quilts will be on display from Friday through Sunday at the National Mall in Washington. More than 150 quilts from Ventura County--including 110 from Ventura, 11 from Simi Valley and 10 from Thousand Oaks--will be there, said Scott Williams of the Names Foundation in San Francisco.

After this year’s display, memorial organizers said, the quilt will be transported in sections because it has grown so large. The panels, which cover the area of 24 football fields, represent 11% of AIDS deaths nationwide, according to the Names Project Foundation.

Johnson first tried to start the quilt when she learned that Pascone had contracted the AIDS virus in 1993. She asked him if he would help her design a quilt that would be done in his memory. Pascone gave her some tapestry and black velvet, but died before Johnson had the chance to do anything with the fabric. Andrews asked her to follow through on the offer.

“I said, ‘Do you still have that fabric?’ ” Andrews recalled. “I want you to do this quilt because Jeffrey wanted you to do it.”

Friends and relatives hope their AIDS quilt will help spread the message that anyone can get the disease and help speed research toward a cure.

In Ventura County, 625 residents have been diagnosed with AIDS since the first case was reported in 1982 and 502 of them have died, according to the Ventura County Public Health Department.