Love, Hope, Charity and Faith

Love and Hope keep all of us going, one step, one day at a time. But it is truly 'divine theos'and the spiritual infusion of grace, that has lifted my own spirits and given me the energy to continue to love, share and care for my own ailing parents, here in snow covered Alaska. The snow greeted me as I arrived and stayed lovely for days.

My parents are both doing unbelievably well. My father with an acute case of shingles, decades after the viral infection which strikes about 50% of us who have had childhood chickenpox. His shingles has attacked the facial nerve....which creates the mask like appearance on forehead and initially around both eyes.

Instead of the unbearable pain that most people experience, he now feels very little pain, and it is only intense itching that we seek to control, along with any further spreading of the virus into nerves or pathways.

This photo show him truly 250% better than what it was when I arrived on Saturday. I thought it was important to show a photo, because most of us don't know what the face of Shingles looks like, much like the concept of any disability, such as my mother's Alzheimer's.

Each of us has many faces, those we most often show the world, and those that we do not.....or can not. As we age, and go through the healing of all of the unseen places of our lives......the hidden pains, the old hurts, or the unfaced challenges......the trials seem to occur more rapidly, and many unseen faces and places become open...to.... and for....healing.

In ways that we don't always seem to understand, we learn to face some of our innermost pains or fears by literally being forced to see their outward projection. And as we walk the spiral path of the journey, with all of its winding ways, we learn to focus and reach with in....until eventually, life's journey seems to end......and a new unknown one begins again.

My father and my mother have faced many trials and challenges and had many different journeys. But they have faced them for 59 years, side by side, working with and through all of them together.

Now, my father is healing from this onslaught, and my mother from the constant imbalances of life brought on by battling cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's and becoming blind.

My mother, who was rushed one week ago, by 5 paramedics to the ER, (after an unbelievably low blood sugar reading of 22) not only survived by love, faith and grace, but is completely undamaged by what should have been a permanently debilitating (mentally, if not physically) onslaught. As my brother, who is a doctor up in Anchorage said, "really and truly she should have died. No one comes back normally after blood sugar that low."

But come back 'normally', she has. And yes, she still has moderately advanced Alzheimer's, and no ,she still can't play the piano ;)...but pray-ers can't always be choosers. She had Alzheimer's before the seizures (2 sets in 2 days) and the coma, and she had it now.... but as she says...'we've always been a little cuckoo in this house, anyway!' and she's right. So, a 'little cuckoo' we all are and that sense of humor has served us all, well.

We are, yet we are not, ordinary people. We have grown through a lifelong succession of extraordinary events. All 5 of us children have almost died (from disease, from a burst appendixes and then a heart stopping reaction to anesthetic, a gangrenous leg, a dry docked fishing boat falling on one brother...crushing his body, our house burned to the ground, my mom surviving stage 3b (out of 4stages) of inflammatory breast cancer, my father was lost for a week during a moose hunting trip, later to survive an almost bursting gall bladder and has also jumped off a flaming roof with two sons in his arms from a second story house during our fire.

Our lives have been high drama, all played out in pioneer territorial and then into early Statehood Alaska, with our food shipped in on barges or fished from the ocean and procured from the forests.

We grew up with Finnish speaking grandparents in Alaska and a French speaking grandmother in Louisiana. Both grandmothers with intuitive gifts that often saved the lives of their own loved ones. We have been blessed with those gifts and continue to use that grace to live our lives, day by day.

Life, I have learned, is not what it appears to be; miracles are truly natural occurrences in all of our lives, but we forget to see them around us, when in truth they are always present. And when we create the rainbow energies of love, hope and faith to find our way to use the full glory of its beautiful blessing rays, with God's grace, we for ourselves and for all those that we love.

No matter how hard life is, or the lives of those that I love, there is a purpose and a meaning to the deepest, most challenging of times. I know that our spirits grow as we are tested, and our energies only increase as we learn just how much each of us is truly capable of.

My father's shingles are disappearing visually, day by day from the surface world of appearances and the virus is ebbing from the deeper level of the nerve where they attempt to hide until you are weakened by illness or age or in my father's care giver case...absolute exhaustion.

My mother is captivating and sweet, as we laugh over the tiniest thing, to the most awful challenges and mishaps of daily life. When one works with love, than even the hardest of daily chores of cleaning up, cooking, cleaning the house, changing bedding repeatedly, medicating, giving insulin injections, toileting....all of the things we take for granted when healthy, become a lesson......and a chance to grow, simply a challenge to be surmounted and overcome, one step at a time.

The smallest events suddenly become three ring circuses and you just have to laugh until you cry that you are all able to even experience them! I left them alone for one hour yesterday as I rushed to a store to buy them some treats.

When I returned home, they'd almost dialed 911 because they couldn't get my dad out of the recliner. They were laughing their heads off over just how hard it is for two old people, working together to do something so simple and it reduced them to hysterical laughter instead of to despair or tears.

My father eventually got out of his chair, with her using her walker to help him push on its handle, as he shook and lurched to get it upright again. Then, he asked my legally blind mother to lead him (with her walker) to get to the kitchen to make coffee. "I can't see he says, bring me to the kitchen."

"Where's the kitchen?" she asked. "down the hall where it's always been' says my dad. "I don't have my memory says my mother, how am I to know where it's always been?' 'Just start pulling me, he says, we'll figure it out and find it eventually.'

Find it they did. And somehow, thank goodness, without burning themselves or the house down. They made coffee together, ate a muffin and were sitting quietly, each in their recliner, all sweet and innocent when I got home.

They were so tickled with themselves that they told and re-told the story and I was so grateful for laughter, for acceptance of change, and for the ability to know that what who we once were, is not always who we are now, and that change is growth, instead of stagnancy, which is not.

And as we look out the window of our Alaskan home, I know that while snow in October might seem a miracle, it is the three of us watching it fall that are the greatest miracles of all. Each part a part of the whole, totally perfect in its apparent imperfection. Each in place in space and in time, while seemingly out of place and out of time.

I thank each and everyone of you for your blessings and the joining of your beautiful spirits with mine. I felt each and everyone of you, all with your own unique gifts and blessings, and you have lifted me up in all ways. Blessings to all of you, as we are being blessed.

Love and Hope

While we are all are celebrating the loveliness of the clear, crisp Autumn days and doing our very best to stay centered and make wise choices during a peak time of financial and energetic recession, it is also important to take stay centered and focused at who and where we are within ourselves.

I've always believed that is the energies from the heart that create the healing powers of both love and of hope and give those energies the direction they need to do good for ourselves and for others.
I had 'hoped' I would be rejoining my creative side and having time to go back to my sewing and quilting projects, again.

That I could recuperate from the strenuous challenges of spending over a month in Alaska (two different times this year) helping my parents and after re-gaining my own healing energies be able to spend some time doing things of the home, hearth, and heart.

Instead, my 'heart work' is asking more of me, once again. I received a phone call from a dear sister-in-law, saying "Michele, you have to come back up, again. Your dad needs you." My dad had been taken to urgency care with what looked like 3rd degree burns on his face. It was, of course 'Shingles.' It covered his face and threatened to go into his eye, where if it lodged in the ophthalmic nerve could cause him to either lose vision or go blind.

'Shingles,' for those of you aren't quite sure of the cause, is a chicken-pox like virus. When we have an active case of chicken pox as children, we 'shed' the leftover virus and get better. Some of the virus, however, stays behind and it lies dormant in our nerves waiting for immune suppressing disorders (disease, cancer, chemo, radiation etc) to weaken us enough for it to re-emerge. As we age, over the age of 60, our chances of reviving the virus increase and we 'catch' it from our own viral supply. If you've never had chickenpox (its 'cousin') you can catch it from an open Shingles sore from someone else (as they touch surfaces after touching a sore) so really its a two way infectious possibilities...whether you've had chickenpox first, or not. After age 85, 1/2 of us will get it. And some of us will have mild cases and others, horrendous ones.

Like chicken pox, it presents with a rash, it creates horrible, scaly patches...little shingles on a house roof, that appear in dark, red, painful and/or itchy patches...usually on one side of the body. Shingles can be excruciatingly painful. People have described it like a razor blade rubbing against a nerve ending. It can last for a month, to two months to re-emerge with a complication of the virus that can hang on for years, to decades. Treatment includes anti-viral shot, pills, and creams. A vaccine is being processed to prevent its emergence and someday, all of us over 60 will probably get that vaccine.

So, I was asked to come to help 'my dad' ...because not only did this seem like the final straw for a 91 year old man who was exhausted as the primary care-giver to my 83 year old mother who is legally blind, a fragile diabetic, and has moderately advanced Alzheimer's. All this after having survived the worse kind of breast cancer a woman can get.

But life has a way of making hard things harder. And getting harder it did. The very next day, after I said "Tell them, I'm coming back up," my mother had seizures, went into a coma and appeared to be dying. A brother who was holding her hand during the process thought "what if she's not just dying (labored breathing and all) but what if there was something we could do and we're not doing it?"

They dialed '911' and 5 paramedics quickly went upstairs to my mother's bedside. She wasn't having a heart attack, but she appeared comatose, even dying. Asking about medications, in case of an overdose, they realized her diabetic complications, took her blood sugars and got a reading of ...22. 100 is normal, 150 is diabetic, and anything below 60 is get me to the hospital, now. She was a 22. She was, indeed, 'dying.' But they figured it out in time, and she's tough and she's a fighter.

We have been told many times, if she hits 40, we may not ever be able to bring her back...yet, they brought her back from a 22. Brought to the hospital, they kept her for one single day and sent her home with a half blind, almost 92 year old man with acute Shingles.

So, now you see...this is how we know our heart work is not finished yet. I have only been back in Oregon for a very short time before knowing I have to go 1,000 miles to be back with them again. But, I do know that. I am too exhausted to face it, but I can do it.

After all, it's a Full Moon of the Hunt for Change and Possibilities and I believe in allowing the Universe to point the direction we need to take. It doesn't mean that we think we are up to it, or that we truly want to, but sometimes we just need to do what needs to be done. And if it involves loved ones, or life and death situations or even if it means the difference between someone giving up and helping someone to hang on....you just have to do it, and do it, and do it..again.

So, tomorrow I fly out of Portland in the morning and arrive in Juneau in the afternoon, both Looking Forward/and Looking Back . I shall be in my beloved Alaska with my two dearly loved parents...just a bit sooner than I expected. I may not be able to make a 'Hope' quilt for AAQI with Julie and Tanya and the Priority Hope Challenge, but yes, dear Julie....I still have 'Hope' in my heart. I have hope, and I have love and I have endurance beyond absolute exhaustion.

When you are so tired, you think you cannot take one more step forward, or so despairing that you truly just want to give up...just remember, one step, one thought, one deed, one day, one minute at a time. Because there are still miracles of possibilities and potential for good.

Please send good thoughts and prayers for my parents and a four working airplanes...2 up and 2 back for me ;) And please, those of you who have the time, have the energy, and goodness knows have the fabric!...make an Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative quiltlet with Ami Simm's at her site: "Priority: Alzheimer's Quilts" , participate in the Priority Hope Challenge with Julie and Tonya, make a String Heart for Heartstrings with Mary, or celebrate Pinktober: National Breast Cancer Awareness Month with a comfort quilt.

We all need love, we all need hope, and sometimes we all just need a bit of comfort.

shown above:
Photo image of my hands making a heart against the backdrop of some of my quilts. This is what quilt making truly means to me and it is what giving and sharing symbolizes as well. We give from our heart when we give the work of our hands.

How to Make a Japanese Knot Bag

I love bags of all kinds and I am always making (as well as using) them! So, when I first spotted a tiny knot bag for sale in an expensive boutique, I knew I had to create my own pattern and figure out the directions and share them!

I was told that they are called 'Japanese Knot Bags.' But by using fabrics of any style, you can most certainly change the look and the purpose of the bag and truly make something unique and individualistically creative!

Supplies needed:
It is such fun selecting an assortment of co-ordinating fabrics, and a wonderful opportunity to use small pieces leftover from fat quarters for trim or the lining sections. I choose a whimsical print with a simple stripe as the lining and trim choices. One fat quarter of each is more than enough to make a small bag. You will also need scissors or rotary cutter and mat, pins and a pencil compass or piece of string tied to a pencil ;) to substitute for creating a round bottom section and a yo-yo circle for trim, if desired.

Creating Template Patterns:
For my tiny bag, I used an 81/2" x 11" piece of paper to create my original pattern. The bottom section was a 4" diameter circle. This makes a tiny bag suitable for a small child or a tiny gift item like a necklace, earrings or trick or treat or valentine's gift. To make a larger one, just proportionately increase the measurements and make it pleasing to both the eye and intended purpose!

1. Sewing bag body sections together; repeat for the lining sections:
Like with any pattern, the body and lining patterns are simply mirror reversed sections. Because of the 'knot' or pulling one handle through the other style of closure, one handle must be longer than the other. The longer handle section will pull through the shorter one when closing. The circular bottom, or base of the bag must proportionately be able to fit the easing (as you seam it at the bottom) but since you can ease with a gathering technique, variations are easily substituted...from very gathered, to not at all.

Sewing bag and bag lining sections:
1.Seam lining sections, right sides together, leaving handles open at the top. Also sew the bag sections 1 and 2, right sides together, leaving their handles ends open.



2. Sewing Bottom Section:
Pin round circle bag bottom along the bottom edges of each of the bag pieces...the main sections and the lining sections. Gather, as needed, with either machine gathering stitches,hand ones, or just using the pins for ease. Sew seams, bottom to main sections of each piece.

3. Sewing Handle Sections of the bag and its lining:
Stitch inner handle curves and outer handle curves. You continue to leave the flat, short end sections open and do not sew them at this time. Turning the bag inside out is done through an open handle section. This looks and feels very strange and awkward, but it truly works. If you've ever sewn a vest and left a side seam open, maneuvering the pieces inside and then out is very similar. You will feel like you are making a mistake, stay focused and pull all of the bag all the way through one single opening...it actually does work! Once it is all turned right side out, it looks like the third photo above.

4. Finish Strap Ends and Topstitch the handle sections all the way around:
To connect the open strap ends into handles, I simple turned under the raw edges of each handle section, and then topstitched one short handle end over its partner to connect and then, one long handle end to its partner, to connect. I finished by topstitching all the way around the handle sections... both inside curve and outside curves.This is not only for decorative effect, though it creates a very nice one...it is to hold the sections properly in place, as well. (I added a colorful button to each overlapped handle section, which also matched the decorative button effect on the bottom of the bag, which is described below.)


6. Adding decorative elements:
I decided to add a decorative element by creating a simple stuffed 'yoyo' for the bottom. Not only cute, it also acts as a bag rest while the bag is set down on a surface. A yoyo is a small circlet of fabric, (see above sizing for proportions) gathered around a simple paper or cardboard template (smaller than itself, in size)

You sew it off with a knot after pulling the thread to gather, then remove the paper template. I added a button to the cuteness factor ;) which co-ordinated with the decorative handle buttons.

TaDa! A finished bag!



My tutorial link to save or post on your blog: Japanese Knot Bag Tutorial

A different, simpler pattern with print out pattern free download from American Patchwork & Quilting Magazine.


Please note:
While photos are interchangeably used for bag and lining sections, while experimenting with them, I decided that I really like the look of bag lining as bottom exterior section and made mine with that emphasis. You can do whatever you like and probably think of lots of other cute extras! Please send photos if you do, and I'll include them in my blog with your name and blog address for credit!

Full Moon of the Hunt for Change and Possibilities

A Full Hunter's Moon comes in tonight, with the glow of October 14, and brings with it the first full moon of the child. Time for all of us to go outside, kick up our heels in the newly fallen leaves, and bite into a freshly picked juicy apple!

As we all awaited the changing energies, many of us spent way too much time looking at relationships....instead of at our self, and the part that we play in them. Now, is the time to look at the inner child's needs....as they relate to all of the rest of our lives.

The full Hunter's moon allows us to go on the hunt...an inner journey of spontaneity, wonder, and joy. Rake up some leaves, light a big bonfire and release all of the old pains and holdings. It's time to get out of our own self-made prisons.....whether they're physical, emotional or psycho-spiritual......and time to expand ourselves, and our views.

As 'hunters', it's also time to go on the hunt. Maybe, you're hunting for new ideas and inspirations; as quilters for that perfect pattern or piece of fabric, as women, for the joy that can fill our life and make the challenges easier to bear. Maybe, you're in need of a good friend, a new quilting group or even just some new blogging friends to bond with. The opportunities are everywhere, we just have to be brave enough and open enough to try them.

As all of our lives swing on the pendulum between attainment and loss, love and hurt, joy and sadness...the full moon lets it all come to a crescendo and gives us a chance to let it all out. It's no coincidence that Hallowe'en, All Saints Day, All Souls Day, and Day of the Dead all arrive in one amazing powerfilled energy bundle.

Time to think about choosing...tricks or treats? What kinds of tricks do you have on your design table, what kind of treats await us in our secret cupboards of possibilities?

Shout Out for Happy Feet

A great big shout out to Paula for my wonderful new "happy feet!" {{{{{Paula !!! }}}}}

One of those fabulous quilters with a great heart and extra-ordinary multiple artistic talents, Paula sent me these great knitted slippers. They originally arrived looking like they just might be 10 sizes too big for me...But I knew Paula not only had my foot size but even a tracing of my dainties, because she had previously gifted me with my oh so lovely Crazy Woman Sox So, I knew there must be a secret to their magical sizing!

There was! It involved a washing machine, fabulous felting instructions and the fun of slipping into them and making them fit me to a 'P' !

Paula had warned me ahead of time, to enclose them in a pillowcase (to catch any yarn lint) and to keep a close eye on the warm water process. With a front loader, I wasn't quite able to watch, nor easily interrupt, but it worked perfectly, none the less. I put them on damp (no dryer used) pranced a happy dance, then set them out (see above photo) shaped and drying. Worked perfectly!

Thank you so very much, dear Paula. I not only just LOVE them, but they now fit perfectly! My spirits are lifted, my toes are tapping, my soles are soul-filled and I'm a dancing to a happy little beat! I love how I'm now felted!

2008 Salem Green and Solar Tour

The Oregon Green and Solar Tours are one of the biggest events of their kind in the nation. Each year, communities across the state offer tours of homes and businesses showcasing a variety of green and solar technologies.

Each tour reflects the unique interests of the community, yet all share a common goal: to educate the public about green and solar strategies. These tours occur in September and October with most of them coinciding with the National Solar Tour date of Sat. October 4th.
Our family business (Bilyeu Homes, Inc.) had two homes on the Tour this year. Our LEED-H Platinum Pringle Creek Community Cottage which is now being used as a model home/office for Pringle Creek and a new home, Elderberry Cottage, which is to also slated to make LEED Platinum. Both homes are on a geo-thermal well, one has extensive solar panels and a rain collection cistern, and both have the latest green certification materials from FSC lumber to the latest appliances and other innovations.
Pringle Creek Community was the 2007 Green Community of the Year and out 2007 Cottage was the top rated LEED-H Platinum home in the nation. These kinds of standards require extensive amounts of research, hard work, and meticulous use of certificed techniques and materials. So, we can't help but be truly proud of our business, the community we work in, and wonderful clients with similar values and passions.

Salem Green + Solar Home Tour
Date: Saturday, October 4th 2008
Time: 11:00 am – 4:00 pm
Location: Start at Pringle Creek Community, 2110 Strong Road SE
Check out the Pringle Creek Community at http://www.pringlecreek.com/

The entire community joins in for a self-guided tour and for the opportunity to meet homeowners, builders, contractors and architects. The tour is followed by a reception at Pringle Creek Community at 4pm. Early registration is $10 per car, or $15 per car after September 26th. Carpooling encouraged and bicyclists are always free.
We always have a wonderful group of bicyclists who often put in many, many miles in a day making the tour and heading home again. I work the Tour from early a.m. until past the reception. It is great fun meeting like-minded people and showing off our families hard work!


above: in the magazine photo...that's me in the stripes on the far left ;-)
 Bilyeu Homes, Inc.

Marie Osmond/Janome Quilting Contest

Using Marie Osmond Quilting Treasures fabric, a new contest challenges quilters to create an original quilt and bring it to a participating Janome dealer by April 3rd, 2009.

The Janome dealer will automatically enter the quilt into a drawing to win a Marie Osmond Quilter's Companion (MOQC) machine from Janome.

One quilt from each dealer will then be selected for the national round, where Marie herself will pick the 10 quilts as finalists. On April 27th, the 10 finalists' quilts will be posted on Marie's site, www.marieosmond.com, for public voting. The winners will be announced on May 17th.

The 10 finalists' quilts will be auctioned on eBay and all proceeds will be donated to Children's Miracle Network, the charity Marie co-founded. (All other contestants have the option of donating their entry to their local Children's Miracle Network affiliated hospital as well.)

'I am thrilled that Janome, Quilting Treasures and Advantus have come together to create this amazing contest,' said Marie Osmond. 'With such fabulous prizes up for grabs, I can't wait to see the creativity and enthusiasm the contest is going to generate. And I'm so pleased that the winning quilts are going to benefit the Children's Miracle Network, a charity so near and dear to my heart.'

Helio Castroneves? Income Tax Fraud?

NOOOOOO, not my cute little man in his yellow suit. Not Helio, tell me it isn't so! Just when life gets more and more challenging every day, I find out my dancing/race car driving champ has feet of clay.

Helio Castroneves has reportedly been indicted for tax fraud in a Miami courtroom, today. His offense? Helio has been accused of using an offshort Pamamanian dummy corporation to hide the actual amount of his income from the IRS.

Along with his sister, Katiucia Castroneves and his lawyer, Alan Miller, the trio is being charged with conspiracy to avoid lawful taxes. Charges are up to five years in prison for each charge that ends up being filed.

Oh, Helio...no, no, no. It's supposed to be 'Dancing With the Stars", not 'Dancing Behind Bars." Dang, nothing's sacred any more. It this is all true and not just some TMZ exclusive that someone trumped up, that yellow suit may be up on E-bay soon, along with a nice race car and some checkered flags, right along with that cute man in his yellow suit's now checkered past.

It's almost enough to discourage me from watching the show! What next? Do you think that Marie Osmond truly did not design her fabric line or that Mario Lopez's dimples were surgically implanted? Don't tell me. There's no such thing as Reality TV? It's ALL an illusion?

Think good thoughts for poor Helio. Maybe this is all the lawyer's fault. Well, I bet two out of three will claim that, anyway. Stay tuned. I may hear more after the hub bub over America's Financial Crisis and the Vice-Presidential Debate is finally over with.

Pinktober: National Breast Cancer Awareness Month

October is national breast cancer awareness month and around the globe, women everywhere are celebrating their lives and their survival from this devastating disease. We all know someone who has battled the challenges of cancer, but the devastating effects of breast cancer on a woman and the incredible journey of survival is a testimony to the courage and strength that is carried within.

Hard Rock(Cafe) International announced the launch of "Pinktober” – a month-long initiative to raise awareness and funds for breast cancer research through a series of live music events started out as ‘Rocktober’ in Europe in 2005 and grew into a global campaign, brings some of the world’s best live music to small and intimate surroundings. The series of events support local breast cancer charities across the world, and proceeds from each event throughout the month goes to the chosen charities.

In honor, memory, and in celebration, I offer my own Pinktober: my updated Breast Cancer Awareness Free Quilt Patterns list. As you check out these links, please play your own favorite rock and roll music and send good thoughts out to all who face breast cancer's challenges!

It's good to remember that any quilt or quilt block pattern can be transformed into a breast cancer awareness or comfort quilt just by the selection of color...pinks, roses, the peachy ballet pinks, and so on. But these blocks, quilts and patterns have been specifically designed for that purpose, so their energy is one of joy and love and intent for a cure for this disease.

Pink Ribbons Quilt Blocks or Quilts for Breast Cancer Awareness:Breast Cancer Pillow by Kaye Wood pdf
Cotton Spice :download PDF pattern: Square in square/rail fence around pink ribbon.
Cure Inspired Quilt
Heartstrings Quilt Project October_Project_Pink3.pdf
Make Mine Pink, Please (Scrappy Stars with Pieced Pink Ribbon Label)pdf
Pink Chalk Studio: Square fence block-2.pdf
Pink Ribbon Comfort Pillow
Pink Ribbon Block

In honour of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Connecting Threads has available a free tutorial to make paper-pieced Pink Ribbon Pins.
Help raise awareness by sewing this simple quilted ribbon for your family, co-workers, and friends. Two sizes are available: large pin is 3″ x 4″ and the small pin 2 1/4″ x 3″.

Ribbon Quilt Block
Pink Ribbon and Soaring Past Time
Pink Ribbons: A Contrary Wife Quilt Top
Quilt of Many Ribbons (rail fence w. appliqued pink ribbon in center)
Rosie's Pink Ribbon Quilt
String Pieced Prayer Pocket Pillow
Think Pink

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• Click to download the free printable(s):
• Breast_Cancer_Awareness_Printables.zip

Breast Cancer (and other Cancers) Awareness Ribbon Quilt Blocks

Cancer Awareness Patterns: free for personal use by Angie Padilla


Ribbon Quilt Block
Cancer Ribbon Quilt Block Templates Pink Ribbon Block

Redirect for the primary post below:

Free Patterns for Cancer Awareness: Quilts, Ribbons, Quilts, Caps, Pillows, Pouches, and other Projects

Cancer Awareness Ribbon Colors for Other Diseases:
This month, we see pink ribbons everywhere, and most of us know that this color represents breast cancer awareness. But you might not be as familiar with the other ribbon colors that are used to promote awareness for the other cancers.

It's just as important to remember all of those we love, who face challenges from other forms of cancer, and to create not only increased awareness for those diseases...but to create comfort quilts or pillows for them, as well.

Black Ribbons: Melanoma
Dark Blue Ribbons: Colon Cancers
Gold Ribbons: Childhood Cancer
Gray Ribbons: Diabetes & Brain Cancer
Green Ribbons: Kidney Cancer
Green/Blue Ribbons: Mental Heath Awareness
Jade Ribbons: Liver Cancer & HepatitisJigsaw Puzzle Ribbons: Autism
Lace Ribbons: Osteoporosis
Lime Green Ribbons: Lyme Disease
Orange Ribbons: Leukemia, Multiple Sclerosis
Periwinkle Ribbons: Hypertension and Stomach Cancer
Pearl Ribbons: Lung Cancer
Pink Ribbons: Breast Cancer:
Pink,Purple and Teal Ribbons: Thyroid Cancer
Purple Ribbons: Pancreatic, Prostrate,Testicular Cancers; Alzheimer's & FibromyalgiaRed Ribbons:AIDS/HIV & Heart Disease, Leukemia, LymphomaSilver Ribbons: Parkinson's Disease
Sky Blue Ribbons: Prostate Cancer
Teal Ribbons: Ovarian CancerWhite Ribbons: Bone Cancer

Failed Wheel Flaps and Quick Landings

I've spent a lifetime learning to take moments one by one and to truly appreciate every single one of them. I've learned that its the unexpected happenings and the things which challenge us the very most, that are the very things that also carry the most opportunity for growth and change.

I've learned to make the most of constant chaos, and a lot of repetitiveness of lessons not quite learned; and so, when unexpected things happen now, I almost do expect them. Not, in some horrible negative way....but just as how things can be and how in the deepest sense (known to many of us who have faced trauma and chaos) that the short pattern to spiritual understandings is often the fast path of earthly occurrences.

I'd warned everyone that for whatever reason, if things can go wrong at airports and airplanes they do with me...not as a self-fulfilling prophecy.... but because I learn so much from all of those experiences that perhaps they just help t shorten my path to enlightenment, even more rapidly. My last flight up, I'd been taken off three separate airplanes for failed instrument lights and put on other, also failed instrument panel airplanes! My simple 5 1/2 hour trip ended up taking me over 15 hours. So, I always warn family that don't be surprised if I don't call as early as you expect. Things just seem to happen when I'm involved!

As I left my beloved Alaska, tears in my eyes, parents sitting there next to one of my brothers in the waiting area, I expected my usual security gaffs as tiny metal objects set off hyper sensitive systems with the knowledge that I, myself, am just a hyper sensitive system of another type ;)

As we flew over Alaska, then Canada, and then in view of Seattle, I could see the mountains, the valleys, the rivers and the beautiful islands...but I could also see the Space Needle and downtown Seattle quickly fade from site. I knew we were not circling back and something had to be very wrong.

After more than an hour of additional air time and no announcement from pilot, co-pilot or attendants, I knew for a fact that something had to be wrong! Eventually, the pilot announces...

"By now, you've probably figured out that things aren't going quite as planned up here. We're having some difficulties getting our wheel flaps down. You've had a tour of south Seattle while we decided what we should do and we have determined that we will begin descent now. We are expecting a normal landing, but we will be coming in at a much faster speed of descent then most of you are used to. Please be sure there are no loose objects anywhere around you and that your seat belts are securely fastened. Also, we will be met by fire trucks as an additional precaution. Thank you for your patience."

Our patience???? OK. Time to go into my center, seek a place of calm, reflect on my entire life, and ponder life and death and the meaning of both, and pray an awful lot all at once ;) " A faster rate of descent than most of you are used to" translates as a huge roaring sound, very intense airplane vibration, your stomach going up into your mouth and your hands gripping the armrests and absolutely, total silence in the entire plane. I think we were too scared to spit, much less talk!

Needless to say, we landed safely and to the total applause of the passengers. The sight of 4 fire trucks and a Fire Marshall meeting our plane on the ground certainly added a bit to the drama of failed wheel flaps and quick landings!!!!