Brave Americans remembered through quilts

For the last six and a half years, Elaine McDonald has been spending part of every day working on quilts that display the names of people she never met. The circles in the middle of the squares are machine appliquéd, but she hand sews the information on the blocks and hand ties them all together. She does it because she wants their families to know that they are not forgotten.

She sums up her project with, “I wanted to know who these men and women were. They were not merely a statistic. I have written over 5,000 names, cut every piece and stitched every stitch myself. I wanted people who might...