Deployment Quilt

I am a member of the my university's Yellow Ribbon Group. It's composed of current and prior service military, our ROTC, military family, spouses, girlfriends, boyfriends, and friends. We meet once a week (even though I can't actually go to them this semester because I have a class) and discuss how we're doing, how we're handling distance, any questions about deployment, etc. It's basically a campus FRG group led by the ROTC leader and his wife. Well last semester, I came up with the idea of posting blue and gold stars all over campus with the names of deployed/KIA service members that are relatives and/or friends of students. Sort of like the Make A Wish Foundation's balloons you buy in the line at the grocery store. Well, we developed that group into a deployment quilt, which our leader sewed. We're going to sit in the dining hall during lunch and dinner hours and collect names from students; then, we're going to attach stars with those names on the quilt and hang it up in one of the buildings. It's really hard to be no where near a military base while I'm at school, and 6,000 miles from our base. College students don't quite get the hassle with pay, the crying for no reason, the empty space on the other side of the bed, moving all over the place. My university, however small, has a great support for military. If it wasn't for this group my junior year when he left for Afghanistan, I don't know if I would have made it. I just wanted to share with everyone how proactive and supportive my school is!

The quilt--which is quite larger than it looks!