For the Love of Friends

Where would our lives be if it weren’t for the friends who share our journeys?

Friends are deeply on my heart this morning as I consider how much they have added to my life.

New friends I’ve met while on the way –I enjoy getting to know you and hearing from you and sharing your excitement and joy over projects you are creating.

Sharing our love of fabric, vintage sewing machines, life stories, similarities and differences.

My life shines a brighter light because we have found each other.

And yes, if you have been reading me for the past 10 years – you DO know too much!


This post is about a very special friend of mine, a sweet girl I grew up with named Julie.

Julie & me, 12 years old, heading into 7th grade together.

Julie, now known as “Jules” in her grown up life, a fact I didn’t know until she found me on Facebook ((Yay for Facebook!!)) lived around the corner and down the street from me.  a 3 minute walk that seemed much longer when we were young.

We were INSEPARABLE as pre-teen girls can be, with sleep overs, loads of giggles, playing our guitars and singing in harmony, being goofy about boys and seeing in each other the soul-sisters we were.

"We will ALWAYS be friends!" we promised each other when I moved a mere 5 miles away ---too far too walk, not old enough to take the bus, definitely too far to ride our bikes across busy roads ---and finding ourselves in different schools.

Life went on.  Phone calls got fewer and father in between.  I’m not sure why, really –but that’s just a teenager's life.

A transfer in my step-dad’s job with Hewlett Packard moved us from San Jose, California to the Boise, Idaho area part way through 10th grade.  I stayed 6 weeks and was miserable.

I couldn’t adjust, I missed my friends, I mostly missed my dad ---and arrangements were made that I would go back to San Jose to finish school and live with my dad.  But my dad was in Santa Clara, and that put me WAY too far away from Almaden Valley in the south end of San Jose to see Julie.

My Junior year, Dad purchased a house on the same street as Julie! We were back in the same high school. By this time our lives had gone completely different direections –I was a drama/choir geek.  I was sewing costumes and performing, and hanging out with other musical/drama kids.

I’d see Julie in the quad, our lockers were not that far apart, and we were friendly, but there seemed to be too great a void of missing years –and I learned, or came to think anyway, that things are never the same.

We graduated.  We moved into our lives.

And this is where we fast forward 40 years from the time we were best buddies.

Something for a friend!

A couple of years ago, as I said…she found me on Facebook, and life instantly got so much brighter!  We caught up on what happened in our lives, and were so happy for where our live are now, and we are back to sharing things ---those childhood connections go SO deep.

I was able to meet up with her in person about a year and a half ago when I was in Arizona teaching and visiting my dad.  It was like we had never been apart.

And so this week, I am extremely sad at the passing of Julie’s dad  just two day’s after Jules’ 53rd birthday, and a couple days before Father’s Day.

Her heart is broken, and mine is breaking for her.

And this is when quilters get into gear.

This quilt needs to go to Jules!

She has often said when I am sharing things on my Facebook wall that she LOVES batiks. 

I made this quilt years ago without a real purpose, without a label.  I made it from gifted ends of strip sets that another friend had given, and I have loved this quilt in all of its quirkiness.  Not all of the blades on all of the kaleidoscope pieces are the same..I used whatever was in the bag and made it work out.  There were also a few Asian prints:

She will love these – her mom is Japanese!

I hope these little bits of happy Asian fabric make her smile.

They remind me of her cat Yuki when we were growing up.

This goes in the mail today as she and her family lay her dad to rest.  Her mom and dad still lived in the house the Julie grew up in, and maybe that is why all of these memories keep flooding back.  From 1973 when Julie and I first became friends, until now…her parents have stayed in that same house in my old neighborhood where all of my old memories of being a young girl with a best friend named Julie live on.

I wish I could be there in person to gift this to her myself, but she knows I am there in spirit.

Are you missing a friend you have lost track of?  Search for them.  Find them.

It brings your life full circle.

Love you, Julie Jules!

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