Hexagons, Hospitals and Soccer

Woes my daughter. She's been in the hospital for 8 days and finally we were sent home. While there, she continued to have radiation and needed transport to another hospital for it. We cannot wait until this is over.

So far, so good on the CT scans and MRI's-Ewing's Sarcoma cancer gone. It was in her right jaw and now it's not. But, I gather the little cancer cells have a way of recurring and so she must continue on with this treatment-30 days of radiation while undergoing 14 chemotherapy treatments-5 night stays in the hospital for every other one; 2 night stays for the other half. Jennifer is pretty tough and doesn't whine, but, oh my goodness, I do, to strangers. I can break down and cry in front of the man that is cooking my daughter's falafel. Like fallen leaves on the water, my emotions run very shallow sometimes. It's what mother's do, when their child is hurting.

Make no mistake quilting is therapy. A big part of life, sometimes, is all about the art of distraction. My worry monitor could really make me a basket case if it weren't for quilting. Being in the children's hospital, because Ewing's is a classic children's disease, I have a bed in the room with Jennifer. I'm normally a machine quilting gal, cause you know, I want to finish the quilt in my life time. But, there's no room for my sewing machine, plus, besides all the beeping that goes on, only another quilter would interpret the sound of the sewing machine as a relaxing purr. And so, I hand sew, 1 inch hexagons. We have a king size bed, so the plan, at least for now is to make the Tillie's Mosaic pattern quite a lot larger as the original pattern is only about 5 foot by 5 foot-I'm going to need 7 X 7. Here's my next hexagon flower/center block. The original pattern only has a couple of these toile type of scenes then solid material of different patterns, I think I'll make mine all toile. All quilters, that have been quilting for a while, know that patterns are guidelines. Use the patterns for the basic ideas then feel free to expand or innovate. My innovation is the method of putting the blocks together. Instead of row by row, I like to focus on the toile/flower center hexagon blocks. Scroll down to the label at the bottom of this post and click on the Tillie's Mosaic/Grandmother's Flower garden label to see all of my progress. Don't forget, for a closer look at my pictures, click on them.

My team, Portugal, got beat by the big bad Germans in the 2008 Eurocup!
The remainder of the tournament continues on over the next few days. I want Turkey to come from behind and whoop those Germans!! Don't you love the beautiful game...smile