Peter held a little bit of magic in his hands: a completed sweater, warm and soft, but most importantly, a reminder of his late wife. She had begun the sweater for him in 2011 but passed away in 2013 before she could complete the project. Beate, his daughter, safeguarded the partially finished garment for years, until she discovered Loose Ends. Paired with a “finisher”—an expert knitter in her hometown—Beate turned over the remaining yarn and needles. A few weeks later, she had the sweater back, finished and ready to wear. It was the perfect gift for her father’s 99th birthday! That is what Loose Ends is all about.
Founded in 2022 by Masey Kaplan (Falmouth, Maine) and Jennifer Simonic (Seattle, Washington), Loose Ends has grown to more than 28,000 finishers in 65 countries, with over 2,500 completed projects to date. Though Kaplan and Simonic started the nonprofit organization as a volunteer initiative, it has grown quickly. Thanks to a sponsorship by JOANN Fabric and Crafts, they both now work for Loose Ends full time.
Loose Ends emerged through common mending and finishing experiences that Kaplan and Simonic discovered they shared, which led them to realize that there was a critical gap in the fiber arts community.
Kaplan inherited a partially finished sweater from a friend, and she altered the pattern, finished the garment, and then dyed it to create something her friend would actually want to wear. Simonic mended a pair of gloves that had once belonged to a friend’s dad. When Simonic returned the mended gloves, her friend said, “It’s just so nice to have someone do something like this. It feels like being cared for.” Kaplan and Simonic wondered how they could bring that feeling to more people.
A partially completed piece of crochet on its way to being finished for the maker’s loved one.
Their Mission
The Loose Ends mission became to “ease grief, create community, and inspire generosity by matching volunteer handwork finishers with projects people have left undone due to death or disability.” I spoke with Simonic on the phone about what her typical day at work looks like. Loose Ends has a part-time employee who helps them read through all the applications they receive from people who would like to have items finished—items that are knitted, crocheted, sewn, embroidered, and more. They talk to people in grief. They match projects to finishers. They also spend quite a bit of time talking through technology with people, from filling out Google forms to photographing their work.
Emotional Gratification
I couldn’t help but ask: “Is it . . . sad?” I confessed that I had heard about Loose Ends months before I knew I would be interviewing them but had never signed up, afraid that the raw emotion of finishing something for a person who had passed on would be too hard for me.
“It’s not all sad,” Simonic replied. “You’re looking at the person through the thing that they loved to do, not the thing that happened to them.”
Moreover, in many cases—like Peter’s sweater—the loss happened more than a decade ago, and now friends or family members have a new cherished object to remember their loved one. Finishing these items can assuage the guilt of those left behind, who carefully kept the sweater or mittens or quilt but had never been able to finish and use the item until Loose Ends came along.
And, Simonic added, Loose Ends connects projects and finishers for people who can’t complete their works for a myriad of reasons. Early on in Loose End’s history, she explained, an unfinished knit sweater came in. A woman had lost her eyesight and could no longer do the complex colorwork, subsequently giving the whole thing to a friend. The friend, rather than rewinding the yarn for a new project, was connected with a gifted knitter through Loose Ends, who not only finished the original sweater to return to the original owner, but also made a small swatch for herself to remember the experience.
Today, Loose Ends has many more finishers signed up than projects that need to be finished, and the company is working to get the word out to anyone who might have in-progress garments or blankets or toys sitting in attics and closets.
As for me, I, too, have signed up to be a finisher. Simonic told me that it is “an honor to be part of the finishing process” for a family, and after talking with her and hearing more Loose Ends stories, I couldn’t agree more.
To learn more about Loose Ends, check out their website: looseends.org.
Erika Zambello is a writer and communications specialist living in Florida. She is a fan of knitting on the move, especially during walks, hikes, and kayak trips. You can follow her fibercraft explorations at @knittingzdaily on Instagram.