Sewing and crafting have always played a huge role in my life from the time I was a young girl. Many of my most blissful childhood memories involve sewing with my Grandmother and Mother.
I had been successfully running my own full time craft pattern business, Rosalie Quinlan Designs for quite some years and had begun a second craft pattern business with my younger sister Melly, called Melly & me when I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2006. As a 36 year old mother of three teenagers this came as a devastating shock.
Working with my sister Melly on our new venture gave me vision, purpose, distraction and heaps of joy. Our pattern designing took a whole new direction after my diagnosis as we decided to outdo each other with ridiculous looking softies to make each other laugh. We even brought our crazy softies to Chemotherapy to make others laugh and to get some really fun blog posts. I am sure the viewers would rather see the softies plugged in for Chemo than me! Because as sisters we were facing such a difficult time, we turned to humor and huge doses of crafty goodness to get us through. This strengthened our bond as sisters as well as bestest friends.
Further into my treatment I began on my favorite appliqué quilt to date. It is called "The Joy of Life" and was designed and sewn during the trying months of Chemotherapy. I would design a block before my treatment when I was feeling creative. I would then appliqué the pieces in the weeks after treatment when my creativity and energy were low. In this way I worked towards a goal and created beauty during an otherwise ugly time. Many of the nurses in hospital were also quilters and enjoyed seeing my blocks grow with each visit. I even appliquéd some of the blocks in the waiting room before surgery. I felt an immense sense of calm and order as I sewed the fiddly little stitches in place.
Now that I am well I can look back and see just how valuable creativity is in working through a crisis. My sister's friendship and support combined with our love of crafting were vital in my healing process. Crafting and sewing continue to play a huge role in my life as this is how I make my living and my joy!
My name is Rosalie Quinlan and I’m a design craft patterns called Melly and Me.
What a wonderful inspiring story! I will have to share this link with my friend who recently completed chemotherapy. I wish i had thought of doing something like this for her.
Love, Violette
Posted by: violette | June 12, 2009 at 09:40 AM