According to Youssef’s wife, Lindsay, Youssef was impeccably fashionable from “toe to ankle”. I wasn’t completely sure what that meant until I opened up the box of his clothing and saw his fabulous collection of striped socks.

Youssef lost his battle with cancer in 2016, ending an incredible life of intellectual, artistic, and spiritual pursuits. He was a passionate proponent of death with dignity, prompting a move to Oregon from New York in the last year of his life. He became an avid spokesman for Compassion and Choices, speaking openly and honestly about end-of-life choices. He studied Judaism and Buddhism, among many other subjects, and was the director of undergraduate studies at NYU for many years. He was also a gifted artist, loved watercolor, and painted a large collection of illuminated letters, including the one below:

When it came to designing a custom wall-quilt for Lindsay, we both knew his striped socks would be a major focus. Youssef had also been studying and painting mandalas near the end of his life, so including a mandala shape was also important. I designed several versions, with Lindsay landing on this one, where the layered circles of the mandalas were offset slightly to create visual movement.

The rest of Youssef’s clothing included some soft chinos in rich colors, as well as some lovely shirts that eventually became the fabric source for the mandalas.

I began by making the border blocks out of the socks and chinos, after all, Youssef wore them together daily.

 

Sewing the sock blocks together was great fun, and the reverse side even gave me some ideas for future work.

Once the border was pieced, I tackled the mandalas, and again, the flip side was almost as interesting as the front.

Instead of a classic zig-zag appliqué stitch, I experimented with a blanket-type stitch that created a nice hatched look to the edges of the circles.

Here is the final quilt, complete with concentric circle quilting that feels to me like the careful raking of a zen garden.

The quilt now hangs in Lindsay’s home in New York City, illuminating her hallway like one of Youssef’s golden letters.