Heart to Heart

Yesterday, I had a lovely visit with my cousin Sean who (as you know if you've been reading this) is recovering from major surgery to repair a tear in his aorta. He's home and up and around and doing GREAT, which is truly wonderful to see.

It was a lovely day all around. After a few days of rain, yesterday was sunny and clear. My brother Gregg was free to go with me (he's taken a leave of absense from his stressful job as head designer at a high-pressure graphic design studio) so we got to have a very nice chat in the car on the way to see Sean.

Once at Sean's house, I gave him the quilt I'd made while I he was in the hospital and we were all edgy and distracted and focused only on hearing news about him every day. I used 5 inch squares of the funkiest novelty prints I had, plus some I had to buy because they just fit what I was remembering about our childhood...I mixed in fabric that had football stuff (cheerleaders, even!), playing cards and chips, lots of hot rods, even all-star wrestling! (Only for Sean would I have bought THAT fabric!) Following the lead of my friend Pat D. who did a similar "color wash) with novelty prints, I laid them out by color and had great fun quilting it. The back is a black fabric with hearts all over it -- appropriate for a heart surgery patient, yes?! And I call it "Heart to Heart." Sean loved it.

(I know it's a slightly out of focus picture. Sorry about that. I MUST remember to haul out the tripod when I photograph things.)

We went out to lunch and talked incessantly and laughed a lot. Anyway. On the way home, after dropping my brother back at his car, I found myself in the heavy San Francisco-commuters-heading-north-at-rush-hour traffic, and decided that the best way to get out of it was to simply go do something else. So, I pulled off and spent a lovely 2 hours cruising around a large Borders bookstore. Rambling around a bookstore to browse is such a treat!

I stumbled onto a magazine I'd never seen before called Quiltmania. Turns out it's a french publication now printed in English. That made it into my purchase pile! It was glossy and well-written, with a good assortment of traditional and art quilts featured. The magazine featured a lot of Japanese quilts too, and I love the Japanese quilt aesthetic.

Today is an errand and chore day. But my heart is a lot lighter after seeing Sean and seeing how well he is. The body is a miraculous thing.