4 Patch

I'm also playing with dividers. : )


I made this a while back, about the time mom was passing:


The spirals coincide with my whole life spinning out of control. As did the back:


Now, it's nearly all bound in bright red, and I'll post when it's finished!


I had this stored in a bag over most of the summer, and now there's a spot of what looks like mold (WTF!?!) on the blue part of the quilt. How can I get that off? Or should I just throw a patch over it? I just started working on this again. I don't have a functional frame right now, so I drape it over a chair and sew that way. I don't like to have it on my lap.




This is the new guy, all hand stitched, and it will be hand quilted for my BIL for Christmas. Like he deserves it. Hah. But I know he'll love it. I love working on this one and I can't wait to get to the quilting stage!
Also, I wish that bush would stay red all year.

The perfect mama, and mimi.





This pic below was taken about a month before she was diagnosed with stage IV renal cell cancer. She'd been sick for about six months, but she'd always had illnesses off and on. She was in and out of the ER trying to figure out just why she was sick this time around. So, a particular ER doc decided to do some scans of her tummy. They admitted her for fluids and probably the flu.
You have renal cell cancer, stage four. If you're lucky, you'll have 6 months to a year. You need to get your affairs in order. We can give you palliative treatment. We need to check the path to be sure it's RCC and not ovarian, then we'll start sutent and radiation.






So many tears were shed. We were scared- Mom, Jen, Mike, Jimmy (BIL), the kids, her best friend, G.
"You'll make it, mom. You've beaten some hard shit in your life. This is just one more thing."
She'd agree, and repeat it in her own words.
She said, let's treat this, I'm not giving up.
The radiation on her head and hip worked. The cancer shrunk.

.....




August, the end of the month, ma got more scans. She was about 4 weeks into sutent, and she was in the hospital due to weakness, illness, and a GI bleed. The oncologist came in and told mom (alone, and just before leaving for a 4 day weekend!) that the treatment now isn't working, and that the cancer grew 20% on the sutent.
"You now have 3 months, if you're lucky. My advice is to stop treatment and get the most you can out of these last weeks."

She called me while I was on my way to get Nicky from school, and she said, crying, "You need to come back right now, pick up your sister." Once we got there, she told us. I was a bitch to her doctor, I am told. We decided to get back to Augusta, where she'd had radiation, and get a second opinion. They agreed that the prognosis wasn't good, but they were willing to try. So she started torisel... it didn't work at all. She was only on it for two weeks.

During this treatment, in late September, early October, she started sleeping most of the time. It hurt to move, and she couldn't stand without help. She couldn't walk. She stopped eating, and she barely drank.

And then, a 2 a.m. call from my sister, who lived with her. Please come over asap and bring mom to the hospital, she's not very responsive, but she was okay a few hours ago. She keeps saying she has to pee but she isn't peeing. I think she's just weakened with the flu again. I got there, mom couldn't understand or get up. We called an ambulance- the first time in my mother's life, or ours, that we called an ambulance.

I met them at the hospital. I stayed till 5:30 or 6 am and then I had to sleep, and get Tony off to school while Mike drove Nicky an hour to his school. This was on October 12th, my nephew's 9th birthday and the 13th anniversary of my father's death.

For the next three days, I was visiting mom in the hospital for about five + hours a day, even though she slept most of the time. On the 13th, I had a five minute conversation with her... I broke down, and that caused her mama alarm to go off and take care of me. After five minutes, she got goofy from the meds and laughed herself to sleep.

On the 14th, I took my nephew up to see her. She had see-saw breathing, as she had the other day, but it was more pronounced and slightly rapid. She was moved from SCU to med surg earlier that evening. They said she was stable, but looking back, I think they sent her there to die. She wasn't responsive to verbal at all at this point, but she certainly was to the great pain she was in... in her back and in her hips. Oh, mom...

I spoke to her nurse that evening, who had been through this with her own mother a year and a half before, and I decided to tell mom it was okay to do what she wanted to do- it's her life, and it's her body. I'll take care of Jen, I'll take care of everything. Please, just always be with us. I love you. Then I reminisced with her about our traveling a few years back. We left. I found out later that she'd decided to let go a month ago. She told her best friend. She realized it was over then.

7:30 am the next day: Jen calls, mom has some respiratory difficulty. Be ready, I'm picking you up. Okay. We get there. She's basically in resp. arrest! Her see- saw breathing was unreal; very rapid and exaggerated. She had an O2 mask and she was still barely getting any sat. She was unresponsive. She was spraying fluid on her mask with each breath and her breathing sounded like someone blowing air into a milkshake. I will never drink one again. We decided to DNR. She was kept on O2 and we cranked up the morphine. Two of her brothers and some long lost (and gratefully found!) cousins got to say goodbye briefly. Jen and I put on NCIS (her favorite!) and we watched it with her while she passed. We saw her take her last breaths... the woman who had given us our own breaths.





I love you, mama.

I've been camera- less and my blackberry phone camera sucks on toast!
This quilt below is one that I made entirely by hand, no machine. No plan. I had a lot of fun with it, and I have found a real love for half square triangles... is that what they're called? I am hand quilting this, too... almost like a comforter, similar to one of Tony's store- bought quilts, with the lines about 3" apart, and horizontal- ish. I don't have a functional quilting frame right now, although I do have a broken hoop- floor frame I drape it over sometimes, and the gals at the quilting shop gave me (yes, GAVE ME!!!) a frame that I can't figure out how to use. It may be missing a part, or I may be really damn dumb.





I also love pinwheels. :)





And I had to add Halloween to the quilt, since Tony loves all the holidays so much. The flying geese, I don't know what came over me. But I do love orange and blue together. The binding is way too narrow for my tastes, but that's how I pictured the quilt, so that's what I'm doing.




I do love this quilt, and I LOVE the postage stamp groups I have in the quilt... but I am so ready to move on. I am going to make my BIL a quilt for Christmas, my sister thinks I should involve lobster somehow. (He's a lobsterman.) He works on an island and he stays there about 50% of the time, so this would be his quilt for the island. It's going to be mostly batiks, and mostly dark colors. I'm not sure how to get started on it, whether I should do a Gee's Bend type or go free-hand with it, or set out with a theme.

Ma is still battling stage IV renal cancer... so many moments, I wonder if 'this is it,' and I think I'm prepared. But I don't think I ever can be. I think I can prepare for that moment, but I sure can't prepare for a lifetime of 'I wish I could call her and ask her something...' My father passed 13 years ago (Oct. 12th) and I still say that. Sutent nearly wiped her off the mat. Her oncologist gave up on her, gave her about 3 months if she's lucky... her new doctor doesn't look at a crystal ball, she just started her on a better chemo and lots of IV therapies.

Nicky is doing surprisingly well, after a really rough month. Tony, as always is great, well except for a broken nose two days ago at school!

The right way to quilt is the way that gives you a blankie AND happiness. This quilt is a ... kind of a short and wide twin- sized quilt, I guess. I quilt on it a few hours a day, even if it's just 5-10 mins at a time. It helps that I stay up late. I'm hoping that I'll have this done soon, because I have a few other ideas I want to try with other quilts, but I don't want to start those till I'm on home stretch with this one. One of the kids broke our digital camera (so says their father, I think he did it!) so until I get one later this week, I have to rely on the blackberry. During the day, it takes 'ok' pictures.






Of course, I had to take a break for one of the sweetest treats of summer...



...and a sleepy look at the quilt. This is the difference between a camera and a blackberry, folks.

It's the first thing that was given to me. I was given life, by my mother.






She knows how to make the best of everything. She keeps the faith, and she's tough as nails.


















Life, it begins and it ends. We all know that. We accept it and we fear it. We plant, we harvest. Things come to life, they grow, and they die.

Life begins, and it ends.








We don't always have a choice of what grows and what doesn't. Sometimes, we nurture something forever and ever, and still, a healthy plant won't make it to the time we set to harvest it.






Love has been planted, from a mother to her children... through every season, that love will live on, and it will be passed from hand to hand, generation to generation, neighbor to neighbor.

That's the way it's always been.






My mother is in the fight of her life. I hope and I pray and I cry and I try to reason and I bargain... please, don't let this be the time that God has set to harvest. God, please let us have more time. Quality time. I love you, God, and I always have. Please wrap your arms around us all right now, because we are scared, grieving, unsure, numb, terrified, and crying. We're grateful, too, for such a love that we can feel all of those things.

Oddly perhaps, that was one of your gifts.






I love you so much, ma. I would die for you right now if I could, and if you'd let me.
Mom has been diagnosed with stage IV renal cell cancer, metastasized to her hip (fractured, currently no pain, but she had what was dx'd as sciatica a few months ago), brain (no symptoms), spine (no symptoms), and possibly right leg (a little swelling, spasms). The doctors may have missed this a few months ago. The doctors are giving us mixed information, and she's seeing some of the best in the state (in Augusta) beginning Monday, for radiation and chemo, every day. The nurse told me tonight she believed it was palliative. I was told before that's not the case. Mom is not ready to give up. I've seen stories of people who have beat this for years.

Family and friends are pulling together, preparing to coach mom and walk with her hand in hand through this fight. I have faith. And I have the knowledge that God has his child in his arms for the whole journey.

LOVE AND FAITH.

The spinning part: Below, 4 skeins of spindle spun coopworth fiber, 2- ply. I need to pick up more of this. I want to make myself a sweater out it. But unless I buy some more fiber, I will have to make Nicky another vest instead! This fiber is really inexpensive (just over $10 for the 6 oz. in the picture) and $27/ lb, and yet it's so soft, easy to spin, and I can handle having this next to my skin. Well, I wear tank tops under everything, year round... I spun this to a worsted, almost aran- weight yarn, and I think it's around 500 yards. I'll need another lb and a half of fiber to make myself a sweater, with some left over.


















I was thrilled to dye up some merino again. I still have some white merino roving left over for even MORE playing! I don't know how much I've dyed so far- I didn't weigh anything, but I think each roving below is about 4 oz. One is vibrant, and one is mellow. I'm sure I'll have these spun soon (yeah I say that NOW...) into yarn for hats, mittens, and socks for winter.




















Oh yes! And I'm turning this:


















Into THIS! I love the bright yellow. Got this from Spunky Eclectic about 1.5 hrs down the coast.
It's been sitting in the closet for over a year, marinating. Now it's going to be sock yarn for Nicky, because he loves yellow. Or "yewwow," rather.

















A shawl, out of my thicker handspun. Well, all except that yellow and blue bit, that was hand dyed for some wool pants by someone else during my cloth diapering days. I'm pretty sure Tony is going to steal this to use as a blankie. Each one of those yarns holds memories for me, and they all feel wonderful.

















And there's this: some socks for Nicky out of this, which I spun up single ply. I wondered the whole time I was spinning this fiber... is it ever gonna soften up? Well, once it was washed and knitted, it bloomed.
















Life and dramas: Mother is in the hospital, we took her up a few times in the past week for an illness that won't go away. Well, they decided to keep her, at least until Friday. They found a large dark mass near her kidney on an MRI. She's handling it well, for now. She had a biopsy today and we'll have the results by Friday. I'm scared. I lost my father nearly 13 years ago. We almost lost ma a few yrs ago, when she had a screwed up surgery and she was airlifted to another hospital. (She has the WORST luck with surgeries.) I actually thought last night, sitting next to her, that I'd go in her place, and she could live here a while longer. I guess I'm too chicken to face what might happen. When Mike's parents passed (f: leukemia, and m: cancer, a month after his father) it was like two sucker- punches in the stomach. I was there for his father's passing, we both held his hand.

Anyway! Please pray that she'll be alright, and that I'm just being the queen of over-reacting. We haven't been super close, but we have our own bond...

Okay, the first thing you want to do is click right here for ::swoon:: Hal. :) This song is sure to brighten your day. And if you're past the point of rescue, click here. ::more swoon::

Ahh. I need a cup of tea. Or a cold shower. :x

And definitely bread.





I've been so busy, and at least a little time has been spent on sewing. Nicky's allowing me to get very little done on the weekends; but during the week, I can get some fun time. Although I have to admit... some of my 'away' time is spent with my sister, watching my nephew play baseball. I should probably shop, right? ;)

So, the 'door' quilt, or the 'house' quilt, or whatever anyone else calls it at any particular time when they walked through here and it was hanging up- it's done, and due to be bound.

Since the weather hasn't been photo- friendly in weeks, these are by lamp light:








The one thing I noticed about this batting (100% cotton) is that it shed like hell. I still like the weight of the batting, and how soft it is. 15 minutes of duct tape to pull all the fuzzies off is a small price to pay for the density and hand feel of this quilt- and the pleasure I had quilting it.






I realized that I just don't have it in me to make perfect quilts. I tried. I ironed, pressed, precisely cut with a rotary cutter, hand pieced, starched, prayed, felt the wrath of the invisible quilting police, and I'll be damned if I could get my points to line up.

Screw it, for now. Maybe I'll sit down (patiently and quietly, for once) and let my extremely talented friend teach me.

So I hit Flickr, where I go for community and inspiration. I found so much of both.
Then, I found Gee's Bend quilts again. I love everything about their quilts. Everything. I love how some of them are made with corduroy, knitted fabric, and the clothing of beloved family members. I love that the quilting is free hand, and not carefully measured- it is harmonious and loving and perfect. I love the colors and the layouts. I love the "free- ness" of it all.

I wanted orange and blue together in my bedroom, and this is what came together. It's simple, and very hasty... I was almost done with the quilt pictured above, and I needed something else to stitch on, asap. I didn't measure this one, but I'm thinking it's going to be close to a full sized quilt. I still ironed and pressed, and trimmed my seams.






And I will say this: my favorite basting technique is safety- pinning, then thread basting. If I exclusively safety pin baste, I always have to un-do and re- do the pins. When I thread baste, I baste sections about 3" apart and it works out beautifully.

I don't use a frame or a hoop, I just drape it over the corner of the table and another chair. I am looking for a large floor frame, but this method works just fine for me, too.




Jess