Quilting Mends the Soul -

This quilt dates back to …well, quite a while ago.

It was from my love of blended quilts phase.  Florals and busy backgrounds with some stripes, plaids and other parts pieced together strippy fashion for ME as the only female in a house full of men-folk.

This was long before quilt patterns and book writing and magazine columns and world wide travel for teaching and lecturing.  Times were so much simpler then.

Though, as I really examine what was going on in my life during the making of this quilt I am brought back to the time when both of my boys (one in middle school and the other in high school) were both suspended on the SAME DAY from two different schools for two different offenses and I didn’t think I could survive being a parent either!

That year we canceled Christmas – all the presents went back, what couldn’t go back was donated – and instead we kept the food, the holiday music and other traditions such as family movie night of Holiday Inn and White Christmas with popcorn, cheer, togetherness and all that went with it.

Lessons were learned.  And Joy was found through Simplicity.

It was likely the BEST Christmas ever, and ever since that fateful year, Christmas has continued to be kept on the minimal scale around here.  I really do wish that Christmas were more like Thanksgiving – with family, friends, food, fun and togetherness, instead of every other commercial on TV being a car with a bow on it as if that is the ultimate gift one can give or receive at Christmas.

No, the commercialism and outrageousness of holiday hubbub turning people into angry raging crank pots, driving like idiots, showing the very worst of themselves – this is not what Christmas was ever intended to be, and I am one year at a time – boycotting it more and more.

Close up of very girly fabrics -

Simple piecing, and room for free-hand feathers in setting triangles and borders.

This was long before computerized long arm quilting entered my life and I became the edge-to-edge queen just to get it done.

Why am I sharing this quilt?  Because for the past 2 weeks I’ve been trying to find ways to put into words what is going on in the periphery of my family.

You all know that my brother Mark passed in September after a 5 year fight with glioblastoma- brain cancer.  He fought valiantly. And yet for 5 years of clean scans we dealt with wondering if it would return - the dread of disease, the spread of the disease, the possibility that this would take his life.  

This sword hung heavily over our family for 5 years. And it was heaviest on my sister in law, Sharolyn.

And it was mostly a good 5 years. We thought that he had won that fight.  If anyone could win it, Mark could.  But you know the rest of the story.

My favorite pink fabric with the leaves (big pink triangle)

Attaching a label.

We received a message from Mark’s sweet wife that she has been diagnosed with breast cancer.

When I read the message through our “sibling hotline” group – I felt thrown against the wall.  I can’t imagine her going through this without Mark by her side, after just losing him.  I can’t.  I can’t find the words.

And to find this out during Christmastime when the season is already so difficult so soon after losing him – I just can’t imagine.

I don’t have time to make her a new quilt, and yet as she goes through upcoming surgery and many treatments to rid her body of this disease, I can’t imagine her going to appointments with the quilt I made Mark.  It has too many memories, many good ones, but many difficult ones as well.  That quilt was comforting him to the last minute when he passed.  Now he is gone, the quilt remains.

No, she needs her own.

And I’ve been signing books and shipping orders like crazy since Halloween when the ruler orders started with the release of our first Good Fortune introduction post.

In going through all of the quilts in the Quilt Vault, this one, that has virtually sat for years unused spoke to me.  I have washed it, fluffed it up, removed any stray threads.

Today I am shipping a quilt.

I hope it brings comfort.

And with it the knowledge that arms are surrounding her.

That we will lift her up.

That though she is weary to the bone

 of living with the word CANCER in her home -

She can make it through this.

We will be there for her.

In every way we can.

Thank heavens for Priority mail – it should be there in 2 days.

So once again, I’m almost afraid to ask – to burden anyone else with this – but if you are of the praying kind, please pray for Sharolyn and her family.  She and Mark are expecting a grandson in the spring. May that be her focus – new life.

If you are of the “sending positive vibes out to the universe” kind – please continue with the mantras, the love, the positive thoughts and energy -

However you express positive emotion – may the ripples reach her in waves of comfort and healing.

And if a little bit of it lands on me, I’d be grateful too.

Holiday fun with some great gals at my friend Lisa's studio!

They welcomed me into their quilting bee when I moved to North Carolina 11 years ago.

We don't see each other as often as I'd like because I am usually on the road when they meet, but they always leave a place for me at the yearly Christmas get together!

Nothing like great food, wonderful conversation and a good old fashioned round of Dirty Santa! Thanks ladies!

Quiltville Quote of the Day -

If anyone needs me - I've been placed in a self-induced time out in my studio!

It's for my own good!

Maybe you should give it a try today, too?