Breast Cancer wipes to benefit local Family

Just some additional details on the local family we’re hoping to help through sales of our Breast Cancer wipes.

Brittany lives in a small town outside of Des Moines. She is 25, and on a routine eye exam they discovered some swelling and sent her to a neurologist who almost blew her off but did tests to ‘satisfy’ everyone & found a mass in her brain. Though it has been removed, there is no cure to stop it from returning so she’s on chemo every month, possibly for the rest of her life. She and her 18 month old daughter live in her parents’ basement since she cannot physically work full time. She does work part-time at a local convenience store. Her meds are $1000/month after the grants/insurance pay what they can. In December, her mother’s insurance is dropping her so her bills will go up further in January.

All profits from the sale of these Special Edition wipes goes to benefit this family.

The current Craft Hope project is to sew pillowcases for ConKerr Cancer. “ConKerr Cancer was established two years ago to put smiles upon the faces of terminally ill children in the hospital. They provide bright and cheery handmade pillowcases for these children. They have succeeded in delivering 225,000 pillowcases up to this date. They have a goal of providing a beautiful pillowcase for every seriously ill child in North America by 2012.”

When I was 12, I was diagnosed with ITP, which is a blood clotting disorder. The only doctors in town who could treat it happened to also be pediatric oncologists (at that time, there were no pediatric hematologists who weren’t also oncologists). So, any time I was admitted to the hospital, I would be placed with the pediatric oncology patients, most of whom were much younger than I.

For a number of years, I couldn’t even really talk about cancer, cancer in children, etc. – it was just too much to deal with, when I could place actual faces and personalities with the nameless, faceless stories and statistics. I still chuckle whenever I think of one of my first roommates in the hospital. She loved movies and hoped her hair would grow back long and straight and blonde. (She was Black.) The nurses bought her a baseball hat with a long blonde ponytail coming out the back.

Anyway, this project was right up my alley. Pillowcases are easy enough to fit into my cramped fall schedule, and kids with cancer are near and dear to my heart.

This is only six pillowcases, but it’s pretty much depleted my current inventory of cottons. I don’t have very many cotton pieces that are large enough for a pillowcase! But I used some of my favorite prints – the Pez prints, John Deere, and Bugs Bunny. I hope the kids like them.

I’ve contacted the Iowa coordinator for ConKerr Cancer and will be mailing these off as soon as she lets me know where to send them!

Little Dresses for Africa Project

Maundy Thursday seemed like a good day to finish up (and, really, start) my Little Dresses for Africa project.
I made seven little dresses, which isn’t a whole lot, but it was all the decent-looking pillowcases I could find at Goodwill when I went!

I enjoyed whipping up these little dresses, and will be sending them this weekend, along with prayers and good wishes, to the project coordinator.

Anyone interested in sewing some little dresses, they’re super easy, and you can read more about this project here.

If you live in Des Moines and you were hoping to send some dresses along with my package, please let me know asap!!

Incidentally, this gets part of one of my 101 projects in 1001 days items checked off!!