Yesterday afternoon I helped staff the Gig Harbor Quilt Festival booth at one of the lovely gardens on the Gig Harbor Garden Tour. All proceeds from the booth go toward providing mammograms for women who can't afford them.
There were many beautiful, peaceful, lovely and unexpected treasures in this secret garden:
But the most beautiful of all was the smile (after the tears were wiped away) on this woman in orange, Sheila, when she realized that it was our group that made the comfort quilt she received last year while undergoing treatment for breast cancer. Smiling beside her is Carol Arnold, who started the Comfort Quilt Project (an offshoot of the Quilt Festival) after her treatment for breast cancer. That project makes quilts for local patients undergoing cancer treatment and has donated more than 1,100 so far.
Carol, left, and Sheila. |
Before we discovered that she was a cancer survivor, she had mentioned that going on the Garden Tour was one of the items on her bucket list and that she was checking off a new item every month. "Next month is piano lessons," she said. She jumped right into the Garden Tour and served as a docent at another garden.
Then we got her cancer story, and the bucket list made sense. We should all embrace life like that, but without waiting for cancer or some other setback to strike first.
You can read more about her story here in local Gig Harbor Patch: http://gigharbor.patch.com/groups/breast-cancer-awareness/p/gig-harbor-woman-fights-back-breast-cancer-seeking-heaca485bd80
A quilter's ferry! |
I made two garden scarves and sold them right away and talked the buyers into posing for the blog. Here I am with Carol wearing one, and here are the nice women who bought them. I made the scarves light and airy so they would be comfortable in the summer.
Note the mola on her shirt. |
Here are more items for sale at our booth, interspersed with garden photos:
Raffle quilt, "Summer Album" |
Fun pincushions by Janet. |
The fan says it all. It was HOT, and people gratefully stopped under the shade of our canopy and then wandered through the dark, mysterious, shady garden areas behind the house. Many wide-brimmed straw hats were worn, in contrast with umbrellas that were needed for part of last year's tour.
Have a colorful day
5 comments:
This was a very interesting and colorful post. Our guild makes turbans for cancer patients and I have made hats to donate to them. The hats I made were smaller so that they would fit without the hair. A really touching post today.
What a lovely event, and very inspiring! I'm glad you had good weather, and your scarves came out beautifully! Glad you sold them, and I'm sure they will be enjoyed by the buyers.
I think they should be called prayer flag scarves!
I want to live in that little shack by the water! And if you ever got cancer, which you won't, Dad and I would hold it together emotionally for you. Mostly Dad though, because I'd be a wreck!
I love the idea of prayer flag scarves. I could print words like "peace" and "heal" on some of the fabric and sell them at our next breast cancer event. Thanks, Lisa.
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