Finished: A Quilt for Shelly

Revisiting my goals from the beginning of January…, I’m pleased with myself! I finished 4 of the things on my list.  This one was #12 on my list, and I haven’t shared any photos of it before now.

A year ago, a quilting friend of mine was diagnosed with breast cancer, and several of us conspired to make a quilt for her. We used Lori Holt’s “Support Group” pattern, and each of us made two bras using colors to represent ourselves and a background white-on-white print from our stash. I got the last two blocks the day before my tonsillectomy in July, so I didn’t have time to sew them together into a quilt top before school started, and then life happened. I did finally finish the quilt in early January, so I took it back to retreat in February so we could all sign it and have our picture made with it. My blocks were the navy one and the bottom right lime green one (apparently I’m very conservative in my undies choices), and my white-on-white fabric has numbers all over it. Even though it wasn’t perfectly white, I had to use it. Obviously!

I didn’t get a chance to take Fence Photos of it before we gave it to Shelly, but here’s one from when I was quilting it. At one year post-diagnosis, Shelly was declared CANCER FREE! So even though our quilt didn’t comfort her through the chemo process, I hope it makes her happy for a long time to look at it and know that her silly friends adore her enough to make a boob quilt. My little giggle through the process is that I quilted nipples all over it. BWAHAHAHA — Shelly cackled when she realized that.

So much fun to be part of a secret project like this.

One of the white fabrics I used in the border has a little bit of smoke damage, and I struggled with whether or not to include it. Ultimately I decided to leave it in, because Shelly was a big support for me in the aftermath of our fire. The smoke damage was for me a visible sign of how we all have opportunities to pay it forward in life, because those gifts do come back to us when we are in need of strength.