Hello, I'm Deanna Springer live at the Great Wisconsin Quilt
Show with insights to this year's event. I am joined by
Francesca Olsen. Welcome, Francesca.
having me. quilter and a fiber artist.
>> I am, yes. I came here all the way from Massachusetts.
>> Welcome to Wisconsin. >> Thank you so much for having
me. quilt exhibit with you?
>> I did, yes. My exhibit is called Witness Sharing Cancer
Stories. I live with stage four metastatic breast cancer. I am
39. And this quilt, this quilt exhibit is about the experience
of young adult cancer and how alienating and strange it can
be to be a person who's mid-career, who's with young
children in a medical system that sometimes just doesn't
understand what you really need. And in the context of a rising
crisis of young people getting cancer more.
>> Yes. Yeah. And the quilt behind us, let's talk about
this quilt. I'll step aside and you can tell us.
>> About it. So this is called verification. This sort of
reframes something that I see as a cancer patient all the
time, which is people online in groups saying, is this
happening to anyone else? Is this happening to you? We need
the kind as patients. We need this kind of validation. We
need to understand, no, not my my fingernails are not the only
fingernails that are falling You know, other people have
gotten this rash. This, like, disgusting feeling is what I'm
supposed to be feeling. So I see that over and over again.
And I have come back to that myself as a patient over and
over again. And I wanted to flip it into a greeting card
instead of like a desperate cry to say, like, let's talk about
what's actually happening to us. >> We all need a support team.
We're human. We need each other. >> Yeah, we need cancer
community having I will say I have 15 other young adult
cancer survivor women cheering me on today, and I like want to
cry every minute about it. That's the best thing, is to
just have other people who get it, and who understand how hard
it can really be, and to not try to put a positive spin on
it all the time. So I'm excited to be to deliver some really
authentic experience sharing about this topic.
>> I appreciate you sharing your story.
letting. know. I mean, you know,
quilters will support you and surround you with love and
you're sharing your story on the presentation stage this
week too. >> I am. I have a PowerPoint
presentation I know, spicy. >> Official.
excited to meet other cancer survivors. So I'm really hoping
if you are a cancer survivor and you're coming to the show,
come hang out and talk and tell me your story. Because we must
exist in a continuum of experience in order to feel
validated and supported and to get over our own individual
silo of experience there. Yeah, exactly.
>> Share this here about the quilt behind you.
>> Okay, so this one is called witness. This is the title
quilt, I guess, of the exhibition for this quilt. I'm
a former journalist, and I did in-depth interviews with 17
other women who had lived experience with cancer, thyroid,
bone, leukemia, breast cancer, all stages, etc. so they all
really generously shared their stories with me and we went
deep. We like we showed each other our surgeries on zoom
like it was awesome. And so I wanted to show how hard and how
unifying this experience can be. So you see, you know, I wish I
had someone to talk to that had already been through it. I feel
okay, but I'm still not right. I don't want to leave things
intentionally left blank for people who did not get to say
anything before they left this world.
words and we all have the stories, right?
>> Exactly. >> Amazing. I'm so proud of you
and the good work you're doing. >> Thank you. I feel like we're
going to be friends now. >> Friends forever. Yeah. We're
quilters. We're friends forever. Absolutely. And I look forward
to spending time with each one of your quilts in this amazing
special quilt exhibit. You know, we have 15 special quilt
exhibits here. >> But this is a special quilt.
>> Thank you so much. I feel so honored to be here and I'm so
excited to share my story. >> Thank you Francesca.
>> To everyone come out and see Francesca's exhibit and and
taken the entire great Wisconsin Quilt show. We were
talking earlier about the fabrics that we've seen. We
already have our shopping list going.
stuff. to take in the special quilt
exhibits, the vendor mall, the education. See Francesca on the
stage. The stage presentations are included with your
admission ticket, so come to the Great Wisconsin Quilt Show
this Thursday, Friday and Saturday and take it all in. To
learn more about this year's event and next year's event,
head over to quilt Show.com. [MUSIC]
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