Community Quilt for Frederick Clarkson

Community Quilt for Frederick Clarkson – Message Diary

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Wednesday October 28, 2009 · 6:01 PM PDT

2009/10/28 · 18:01

As many of you know, my sister and I have been making a series of quilts for Kossacks who are facing serious illness. We have been sewing them – but you are providing the meat of them for they are constructed largely of your messages, written in archival ink on muslin, and set with pictorial fabrics that are meaningful for the recipient.

Without question, it’s your words that make these quilts so valued by their recipients. Think of one of these quilts as a giant, cuddly group get-well card – something that will be kept and valued more than a stack of cards ever will. Such a quilt can be held onto, cried into, or hung on the wall and read over and over. This a very special way for a person who is ill to keep the well wishes of all their friends close while they go through their treatments.

Would you like to send such a quilt to Frederick Clarkson? He's a good friend to Daily Kos and to Street Prophets (where I write as Rain). He has been dangerously ill with blood clots. Thankfully, the problem has been caught and is being treated but Frederick has been through an ordeal -- and it is not yet over.

I am figuring the cost of doing each quilt at $4 per message – about the cost of a sending a card. This covers materials and a bit (certainly not all) of my time. The minimum number of messages required is 44. Pictured below are some examples:

Othniel’s quilt (44 messages), pictured with me. Othniel is so attached to his quilt that he recently took it through an MRI machine with him – he couldn’t be parted with it for the length of time of the test! He remains in the hospital receiving an IV antibiotic treatment for a drug resistant staph infection – please keep him in your thoughts.

Exmearden’s quilt (180 messages). Exmearden has kept her quilt with here through her chemo treatments for cancer of the heart and lungs and says it has been a wonderful support to her.

MsSpentyouth’s quilt (48 messages) – she loves it and it has given her a big lift in her fight for treatment of her brain tumor.

Moe99’s quilt (47 messages). Moe is battling lung cancer. She cried when she learned of her quilt, it was that touching.

The most recent one is the quilt for Michelle Caudle, fighting ovarian cancer while her husband is away in the Army. He enlisted to keep her in treatment. This has 44 messages and I finished it today. It is called "Flowers for Michelle" and is composed of floral prints.

A quilt for BFSkinner (who has a severe case of lupus) is in process and we are planning to finish it this weekend. We’ll start sewing Frederick’s quilt right after that. Depending on the number of messages for Frederick, he’ll have it about a week to ten days after that.

If you would like to include a message for him on the quilt, please write it in a comment below. As before, we’ll need at least forty-four – but we can have more than that. Please don’t be shy and speak your heart to him. What do I mean by that? Tell him something from your heart that will lift his.