Cause for Celebration!

I'll admit that I could have been celebrating this accomplishment months ago had it not slipped my mind. This is even sadder when you consider that I am the publicist for the AAQI (Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative). If you don't know about this nonprofit organization. I truly encourage to check it out. All the money raised goes to finding a cure for Alzheimer's and is lead by the amazing Ami Simms. Anyway, I made a $1,000 Promise which means I agreed to create quilts and donate them for auctions that are held at the beginning of each month until I raised $1,000.  Well I have raised $1,023.62! And I  plan to keep going. My mother-law-in has the disease and my friend Ron was diagnosed when he was only 50.

The idea for the $1,000 Promise came from Joanne Guillemette of Shelburne, Vermont who has raised more than her $1,000 pledge too.This project is an extension of the Priority: Alzheimer’s Quilts project where people “make finding a cure for Alzheimer's disease a priority” by creating mini art quilts in any theme with a maximum size of just 9" x 12" (so that it fits a USPS Priority Mailer without folding. So far, 84 of us have taken up the challenge.

This is just another wonderful example of the power of quiltmakers and quilts to make a difference in the world.  The quilt shown here is one I will be donating. I've reworking some old journal pieces and giving them new life and this is one of those reworked pieces. It's called "Let There Be Angels" and is made in honor of my adopted Grandmother Fields. She was a feisty, tiny, deeply religious, Baptist woman. Ten years before died in a rare moment of clarity, she asked me why she couldn't just go to heaven because she was done with this existence and when I couldn't provide her with an acceptable answer she said, "Let there be angels waiting for me." Sadly it was our last conversation. She died shortly before her 100th birthday. I hope she found her angels waiting for her.