Muddled Madness & Miracles

My wife, Teri Dyck, has been sewing since the age of 8. She worked full time in the field of medical administration while raising two active children. She sewed children’s clothing for our children, our 17 nieces and nephews and for charity, creating her own designs and entering them in the Los Angeles County Fair for fun and enjoyment. Of the 7 years she entered the Fair, she won the Sweepstakes Award for Clothing Construction 5 times, given each year to the recipient of the most blue-ribbon sewing awards during that particular Fair.

In 2003 Teri became completely disabled after enjoying every moment of her 30-year career. A combination of Rheumatoid Arthritis and other debilitating autoimmune diseases, Diabetes, Heart and Lung Disease and multiple serious health issues caught up with her, creating a life-threatening situation. Teri was too ill to work, to sew, or enjoy other simple activities.

On March 4, 2005, Teri suffered a massive blood clot which blocked the heart (and prevented oxygen from reaching the brain). The doctors did not think it was a survivable event, and notified our family. We prayed, asking for a miracle, and we got one. She survived, after 5 days in the intensive care unit. The clot had broken into dozens of clots in both lungs. She has found she has lost short-term memory as well as a number of thinking skills. The most frustrating loss among them is the loss of the ability to organize anything, a source of extreme frustration for her. Our home is “dotted” with “sticky notes” all over desks and walls so that she will remember even the simple activities of daily living. She calls this new, disorganized thought process “Muddled Madness”.

But, we have come to appreciate the simple things, the small moments – time spent with our grandchildren, the occasional day when Teri is well.

As Teri’s arthritis worsens, she finds she is no longer able to sew the fine details that she put into her children’s heirloom clothing. In order to regain some of her mental skills, and to keep her hands as flexible as possible, Teri began making quilts. It was good mental exercise to draw pictures of her ideas and to use the math required to calculate yardages and seam allowances. The quilts first came to her as ideas that “wouldn’t go away” in the middle of the night as she couldn’t sleep. She would go draw her ideas on paper and go back to sleep. During periods of the day when she was feeling well, she would sew a block or two until she finished a quilt. She much prefers making children’s quilts, and sews them for our grandchildren, now ages 1 and 3. She often using scraps from children’s clothes made over the years. Whenever able, she still sews for charity, now making quilts for children who are seriously ill, hospitalized or impoverished.

She is still adjusting to life with more - and growing – challenges, but she appreciates the miracles that have kept her alive.

I have been her partner in marriage for nearly 24 years, and I have taken my faithful computer, the enjoyment of playing with graphic programs, and the challenge of taking a finished quilt from my wife’s “muddled madness” in an attempt to create patterns of her favorite quilts. It is my hope that you enjoy my patterns and her (accidental) designs.

John Dyck, NEI Enterprises

Click here to view Teri Dyck's Patterns