Reconnection

Michele Bilyeu writes about her inner transition into a new year in her blog post:  Reconnection

She describes her newest prayer flag by writing:

"Birds have always been seen as special messengers of hope from above. While bird feathers, besides being engineering masterpieces, are often seen as symbols of reconnecting us with hope, and a belief in the unseen and as yet unknown.

I love finding feathers along my own path whether I am simply walking in my own yard in Oregon where feathers are more likely to have been left from one of my own flock of domestic chickens or along the beautiful beaches along the channels of ocean waters in my home state of Alaska where I reconnect with childhood, family, and the feeling of being home and truly returning to my own nesting rebirth year after year."...

You can read more about her prayer flag of hope and the joy of reconnecting at: http://www.with-heart-and-hands.com/2015/01/reconnection_19.html

A Celebration of Life

Michele Bilyeu:

"My sister-in-law, Shelley, along with my youngest brother, Rick, fought a courageous 10 month battle with her Stage 4  diagnosis of small squamous cell cancer late last year. She lost that battle a week and a half ago while staying in Seattle, where she had been going every three weeks for chemotherapy, flying from their home in Juneau, Alaska to Seattle for chemotherapy.

They had tried and exhausted every kind of chemotherapy drug, and even tried experimental therapies in hopes of prolonging her life. That she lived a full 10 months with a terminal, late stage diagnosis and survived long enough to meet her first grandson is a testament to the determination of the human spirit against impossible odds......."

read more at: A Celebration of Life...

Making Prayer Flags

Michele Bilyeu on a class making prayer flags with quilt guild members.

I had a wonderful time teaching a class on the making of "Peace and Prayer Flags, Garlands, Pennants, and Bunting" at the Polk County Fairgrounds in Rickreal, Oregon for our local Mid-Valley Quilt's "Quilt College".

What a great group of women! Each and every one went 'outside of her personal' comfort zone in creating peace and prayer flags, making them as individual as possible. And every single one of these lovely ladies added something that was unique, creative, and different than my samples!

I provided kits for 14 different peace or prayer flags and they had a wide variety of individual kits to choose from even among their favorite 'looks'.  I provided choices that included patriotic, country, Victorian, rainbow 70's, religious, spiritual, just plain cute, and native cultures and traditions. But of course, I didn't tell them, what was what, or give any advice on select and being me, they could switch ingredients and ink jet quotations if so desired.

And they did!....
read more at: Quilt College: Peace and Prayer Flags

Gratitude

Michele Bilyeu shares her Gratitude  today by posting:

I am feeling so very grateful for the beauty of Spring flowers, the sound of early morning bird song, the playful antics of dozens of little squirrels as they perform their high wire acts from limb to limb. I am grateful for the budding of new leaves on trees, the buzzing of bees, and the sweet sound of humming birds as they flit back and forth from our many feeders to fresh blooms in the yard.

Grateful that my youngest sister-in-law, Shelley, with advanced Stage 4 lung cancer is holding her own, after her 7th chemotherapy treatment. She and my brother fly from Juneau to Seattle every three weeks for another round of treatment, so while it might seem discouraging that they she is now on 'maintenance' levels, that is actually a good thing. She is holding her own and still striving to live until her second grandchild is born in May.

Grateful that my brother in Eagle River who battles one round of pneumonia, and one medically induced coma after another, is now feeling well enough to have some physical therapy to get his strength back. And his wife, with end-stage kidney disease, is now back to holding her own against the increasing odds of finally "being sick enough" to make her way up on the kidney transplant list.

Life if filled with so many challenges, but we focus on the good, the daily gratitudes of health, happiness, and the ability to bear whatever pains we might feel that day.....

read more at:

With Heart and Hands with Michele Bilyeu

Happiness

In honor of the "International Day of Happiness", Michele Bilyeu shares her thoughts,  and her "Happy" prayer flag garland at: http://www.with-heart-and-hands.com/2014/03/international-day-of-happiness.html

With Heart and Hands
Michele Bilyeu

Finding Peace

If any of you have followed the art and quilting journey of MaryLou Weidman, then you might know that her husband, Mark, was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.

Mark has been fighting a valiant and courageous battle, and with many rounds of chemotherapy, his tumors had been shrinking. Recently, however, MaryLou shared that his brain cancer has returned and it has been very hard on all of them.

She asked us, if we believed in prayer, to send prayers for peace as they have all had a most unsettling time with this hard, and most challenging of news.

To read more about the prayer flag that I made for Mark and MaryLou go to:
 http://www.with-heart-and-hands.com/2014/03/finding-peace.html

With Heart and Hands

Michele Bilyeu

Gratitude

Michele Bilyeu shares her newest prayer flags as she writes:

My prayer flags of blessings are flying high in the winds of gratitude.  Blessings of gratitude for all of the many miracles in all of our lives, gratitude for patriotism that unites rather than divides us, and love for the good that is done in this world by so many.

And my heart filled with blessings as my brother was brought back and out of his medically induced coma, on Valentine's Day!!!.

Read more at:

My Heart Filled With Blessings

"My Valentine of Love"

From Michele Bilyeu...
Oregon is facing the challenges of a huge snowstorm. We live down a long, long country road driveway and we haven't been able to leave the house since Friday.
And on Thursday, I learned that my brother Doug, of Eagle River, Alaska was put on a ventilator and into a medially induced coma.
This is the second time in just 2 years that my brother has been rushed by paramedics to Providence Hospital in Anchorage unable to breathe from severe cases of pneumonia. 
What is a worried sister, whose heart is filled to bursting with love and prayers to do?...


Read more at:http://www.with-heart-and-hands.com/2014/02/my-valentine-of-love.html

All You Need Is Love

Michele Bilyeu here

All You Need is Love

 It's February, and our thoughts all go to Valentines Day, hearts, and love, love, love.
Are you singing the Beatles's song? I know that I am!  But then I grew up with long hair, skinny suits, mini-dresses, dangly earrings, tie dye, rainbow colors, graffiti, and hoping and praying for love and peace everywhere!

Oh, wait...those are all still here... and yet back "in" again!  They might have a new name or a slightly new look, but it's all part of how patterns all repeat in our lives. All we need is love..and somehow, that never, ever, changes.

So, I'm hoping and praying for peace and love...here, there, and everywhere. Peace for the Super Bowl, Peace for the Winter Olympics, Peace for our homes and in our hearts!

And what have I been doing?......making peace and prayer flags...it's all about love!
Read more at:
http://www.with-heart-and-hands.com/2014/02/all-you-need-is-love.html

Garlands of Prayers for Everyone, Everywhere

From Michele Bilyeu

My now completed garland of prayer flags waves across the entry way in our home in Salem, Oregon. I feel their grace, their power, and their love... every time I look up, or pass under them.

And I look in absolute and utter amazement at this KTSX news photo of a school ceiling in Oklahoma. The signs of the horrific devastation of a tornado's path.

Tattered curtains and broken lights and a view of the heavens above. An incredibly powerful image that evokes the feeling of prayer flags and bells.  

Prayers now released and finding their way across the 20 mile path of destruction. Beauty of spirit within chaos, loss, pain, and destruction. And it reminds me of my own roots and why I am so drawn to these signs, and symbols of something far greater than just the destruction. 

 I am reminded that after everything else is destroyed..there is still goodness. and there is still great love.

............http://www.with-heart-and-hands.com/2013/05/garlands-of-prayers-for-everyone.html

To Boston with Love

 Michelle Bilyeu shares these flags for Boston

"When I first discovered that the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild was asking for prayer flags for Boston, I thought to myself..in this order...I'm not a 'modern' quilter...(I like to see myself as improvisational,or liberated, not 'modern';)..... I've already made a Boston prayer flag (and shared it)....I don't have one single moment of extra time and..... how can I keep doing what I do.... and survive my busy life....and then......as I always, always do..

.....ok, so why can't I make a prayer flag for Boston????

So, I did!"

You can see more photos and read more about these flags here.

Love is...Looking in the Same Direction

Michele Bilyeu dedicates this flag to the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing. 

She eloquently explains her thought processes over on this blog post.

from Alaska

Michele Bilyeu  sends these images and writes "During a time of intense personal challenges where I have often asked for shared prayers, and well wishes for members of my immediate family, the designing of prayer flags has been a natural progression of my fiber art.  I am always in prayer, and endlessly creating prayers flags from the simplest of fabric strips that I hang from trees or my prayer arch outside, to genuine Buddhist prayer flags specially delivered from the city of Mungpoo in the Darjeeling District of the Himalayan mountains from a dear Buddhist Himalayan blogging friend, to these special art flags that I created for Oceanside Museum of Art. 

I have followed this Prayer Flag Project blog for a very long time, and have loved all of the beautiful flags that everyone has created. So, it was a a delight to extend my thoughts, my prayers, and the making of my own flags to a greater, and deeper meaning as I created my prayer flags for submission to the Oceanside Museum of Arts Prayer Flag Project and their project submission, now to be included as part of this group!

My flags were made on my own painted fabric with raw edge applique, beads and inkjet printing. They include quotations from well known sources on their fronts, and my own prayer flag blessings (in poetic form) on each of the backs of the flags to tie them into my themes.  

Knowing that my three prayer flags are flying high with so many beautiful creations,in California,  I know that so much goodness and intent is being manifested during all of our personally challenging times and the current challenges of Hurricane/Super Storm Sandy on the East Coast.  We are all combining our energies of manifestation, and healing from East to West, and West to East and the thoughts and prayers of so many only intensify with the height, the depth, and the breadth that all of these external energies of rain, wind, and storm!"