January 16th 2007

I imagine everyone has given up on my ever posting to this blog again, but should they ever return they will see that I have indeed surfaced to this blog once more.

Now be sure you are sitting down when you read this next bit of the posting, I have finally basted Winnie's quilt and am hand quilting in the sashings as of 1:20 PM today. Yesterday, being Martin Luther King day and celebrated at all Florida Government offices, USF was closed. My dh had to work so I did the project that requires him to NOT be here! I spray basted the quilt on the livingroom rug. It went together quite quickly and I think now that it has been so many months since Winnie left us to be with Our Lord I think.... i can handle working on this quilt for her family.

I don't know if I wrote anything about my dear friend Joanna here but she and Winnie told me on the same day just hours apart that their breast cancer was back and had masticized. Winnie passed on May 9, 2006. Joanna has been fighting an uphill battle all these months, most of them without the benefit of chemo treatments due to many other things. Pain/radiation/blood counts/illness. With my dear friend who lives only 15 minutes from where I work so ill and with the same ailments as Winnie suffered earlier in the year, it has been too hard to work on Winnie's quilt.

I think it is a big step in "my" healing that I am able to work on it now.

Another thing that was helpful to me is even though it has been pinned to the design wall in my hallway all this time, it was pinned there with the backing blocks sections on top. So when I spray basted it and am now quilting it, it is NOT the part I have been looking at all this time but the fresher "front" of her quilt. It is amazing to me that state of mentality is so important in my quilting.

I have many projects I NEED to get done this year. and many more that I would LIKE to get done this year. Last year, shortly after Winnie passed, I took up soapmaking. I think I "hid" there until about November. Then regular life and holiday time things took over and now I can start fresh after the turn of the new year.

So dear friends, if you are reading this, I am still able to be reached at the email address you had for me all this time.... debrat @ you know where . rr. com..... let me know that you are there cheering me on to get this project off of my quilting lap and on to the laps of her grandchildren when they visit their grandfather.

Have a blessing filled 2007

Denise/deBrat feeling as if the whole world is no longer all on her shoulders.