BY HILARY GROUTAGE SMITH
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

    Soon after last year's Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Andrea Bair began to buy patriotic fabric. With the entire country discovering new ways to express patriotism, buying red, white and blue material seemed perfectly natural. She is a quilter, after all.
    Before long, a project presented itself: Bair, through the Internet, met with quilters across the country who were designing quilts in memory of those who lost their lives in the attacks. The effort, America's 9-11 Memorial Quilts, includes seven works to be made by volunteer quilters across the country with donated time and materials.
    For her quilt, the Salt Lake City woman chose to honor the Port Authority Police Department, an agency in charge of policing the World Trade Center and several New York bridges and waterways. In all, 37 officers and commanders lost their lives, along with the yellow Labrador, Sirius, a K-9 officer trained to sniff explosives.
    That left Bair with 38 photos to be included in the quilt.
    "I wanted it to look like you had spread the photos out on the floor to look at them," she said. So she chose a topsy-turvy log cabin pattern, with the 38 photos placed in the center of blocks that were surrounded by strips of fabric. In the end, there were more than 150 fabric patterns in the quilt, which also included images of the twin towers, the Port Authority Police shield, two poems written in the fallen officers' honor and the agency's slogan: Pride, Service, Distinction.
    The edge of the quilt was made of blocks with the hand-embroidered names of fallen officers.
    "The first day I got the pictures, it was eerie. I just stared at them and got tears in my eyes," Bair said. "You look at those photos and there are brothers, sisters, husbands and dads in there who were just here and now they're gone. You get humble to say the least."
    Bair, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, led the effort of 12 quilters from five states who were involved in the Port Authority police quilt. At 30, she might have been the youngest; and with only four years of experience quilting, she might have been the newest enthusiast. Participants included a school teacher from New Jersey whose students had lost parents in the tragedy, and a house-bound woman who painstakingly embroidered each victim's name on a block using 750 french knots.
    When the quilt was assembled, Cheryl Kirkham of Salt Lake City volunteered to machine quilt it. While stitching it, Kirkham added stars and eagles in the borders.
    "You know, in a way it was sad. I didn't think it would strike me that way, but when you go around all the photos of those people and you see the look in their eyes, it did kind of strike me that way," Kirkham said.
    Among the other memorial quilts in the works is a 10-by-60-foot creation being assembled in Wisconsin to be dedicated to all the victims of the terrorist attacks.
    The Port Authority quilt was delivered to New York City in mid-November. Charles De Rienzo, superintendent of the Port Authority Police Department, accepted the quilt. "This is an extraordinary gift that comes from the heart and soul of America," he said.
    The quilt is on permanent display at the Port Authority Police Department headquarters.