A Blanket for Hope

I have been very crafty lately. And when I say crafts, I mean sewing. I took a quilting class this summer and have been excited about using my sewing machine for the last several months. A recent project was this:



















I made this blanket for an adorable 5-year-old girl named Mia. She is my coworker Michelle's daughter, and she was diagnosed with leukemia a few years ago. The orange ribbon for awareness is associated with childhood cancers, and Mia's family has adopted the orange ribbon as a sign of hope and support. Last year, they had a banquet and auction to support her cancer treatment. (They sold t-shirts with "Cure LeukeMIA!" on them - isn't that creative?) This year, Michelle was planning another event, so I told her I'd make a blanket to auction.

I used orange satin for the back and trim of the blanket, and picked a pink and orange heart patterned fleece for the front. "Princess" Mia is a very girly girl, and I thought pink hearts with orange satin made a sweet, spunky blanket to support Mia and her treatment.

As I was working on the blanket, I decided I'd tell Michelle that she could decide whether to auction the blanket or to just give it to Mia. After all, I made the blanket with Mia in mind, and it was a gift for her either way. When I took it to work, Michelle decided to give it to Mia. Apparently, Mia loves blankets and always has them with her.

Today, Michelle shared some great news on Facebook -- Mia's doctors say she has just one month of treatment left before she will be considered cancer-free! So I'm glad to be able to share about the blanket, and joyful beyond words for Mia, Michelle, and their family that Mia's road to recovery is almost over.

(I've made another blanket for another adorable little girl - Ross's new baby niece - but I won't post pictures until we meet her and give her the blanket at Thanksgiving.)

What to do with all this time?

Being unemployed is boring. I keep applying for jobs, but I'm letting the application flurry slow down a little bit while I hope to hear back from the jobs I've applied for. (But if you hear of anything...)

So what to do?

Answer: MAKE THINGS.

Here's an up-close shot on a blanket I made last week for my friend's new baby girl. They're doing a bird theme for her nursery and I was really excited to find this adorable flannel print (it's upside down, but it's still clear that those are cute little blue birds). The back is that fuzzy red raised-dot fabric, and you can't see it here, but I put a pink fleece flower detail on the back.















I hadn't sewn anything in a while, so I made this potholder to practice for the blanket (and get my sewing machine's tension right). The fabric is up-cycled from a skirt I got in Mexico as a child, and the lining is a fleece scrap I got a long time ago. When I was going through my stuff, I couldn't bear to get rid of the skirt, so I cut it up and made this:















The materials were essentially free, I got to make the awesome fabric into something useful, and now we have a big potholder. Everybody wins.


Now to shift gears into a different medium -- food. We had Ross's cousins over for dinner last night. One of them is vegan, and I wanted to make a dessert everyone could enjoy. Last summer when I worked at KU Med, Sara over at The Innocent Primate Vegan Blog brought her delicious creations into work a lot, so I know she knows her stuff when it comes to vegan baking. I made these raspberry jam thumbprints from her recipe for Blueberry Jam Thumbprints. They were a hit, and I'm definitely going to make more of them.