Sewing Scarves for Cancer Patients

This is the story of two amazing women who I met on the last day of Fiber College and a random act of kindness that has touched my life...and will soon touch the lives of many women with cancer.

For years, while my sister Nancy dealt with the side effects of ovarian cancer treatment, I sewed her scarves. Lots of scarves. It became my therapy as I supported her.  I wrote about Nancy's scarves on my blog at My Sister's Scarves. I hope you'll take a minute to click on the link and read her story.

The short version is that I made so many scarves Nancy couldn't possibly wear them all so we began making them to donate to the Maine Medical Cancer Center in Scarborough, where Nancy went for chemo, and the Cancer Community Center in South Portland. After Nancy passed away in 2010, I was left with bins of cut out scarves to sew. It became more than I had time to keep up with so I brought a bin of the scarves-to-be to Fiber College with me last week, hoping that some of the quilters there might be able to use the fabric. The bin sat on the quilting table for four days, and, at the Farewell Get-together on the last day, a woman named Kendra introduced herself. Let's call her  "Amazingingly Kind Woman #1".

Nancy's scarves

Kendra explained that she and a group of her friends from the Searsport area would like to complete the pile of scarves left in the bin and donate them to the Augusta Cancer Center. In the time it took me to finish my bread pudding (yummy!), Kendra had surrounded herself with interested sewers and was showing them the scarves. She actually had one on! I felt myself tearing up and had to walk outside for a minute. Thanks to Kendra, "My Sister's Scarves" would go on . . . and help other women like Nancy.

And it doesn't end there...

Nancy 2006

Another woman, Beverly from Medford, Maine, introduced herself and asked if she might have a cut-out scarf to use as a pattern so that she could make some to donate to women with cancer in the Dover-Foxcroft area. (Again with the tears and the dash outside to compose myself). To me, Beverly will always be "Amazingly Kind Woman #2".

Now I'm wondering if this might go viral . . . more and more of us sewing these simple reversible scarves for cancer patients.

Nancy's New England Patriots Scarf, Side #1

 

and Side #2   Go Pats!

A few days after I returned from Fiber College, Kendra forwarded this to me . . . her invitation to her friends to join her to sew scarves. (And check out the reference to moose hunting...this is Maine after all!)

Good Evening Ladies~~~

 

I am back and ready to do something!!! Bruce will be away moose hunting so I think it is time for a get together.

 

So on Wednesday September 24th  at 2:00 you are invited to our house.  We will be making kerchiefs for chemo patients.  I was given a box ~already cut out ~ so we need to sew them~turn them~hand stitch the opening ~press them~ and then top stitch them.  We need lots of hands~~it doesn't require any sewing skills.

 

I will have wine and appetizers.
Hope to see you all~~it will be a good time!!!

 

~Kendra

So this post is a great big THANK YOU to Kendra and Beverly, two very kind women who I was so fortunate to meet.
 

"Carry out a random act of kindness, with no expectation of reward, safe in the knowledge that one day someone might do the same for you."
~Princess Diana

 

  

 This post is linked to:
Sew Darn Crafty at Sew Many Ways

 

In loving memory of my sister, Nancy Smith Tufts

1952 - 2010



 

Relay for Life 2010

Nancy at Searsport Shores, Site #22, Aug. 2007