It takes a village

 to make a quilt.  Ask me how I know?  In 2015, I joined a few hundred other people from all over the world in the slightly mad pursuit of a hexie swap called #hexiedownunder, making two 1"/2.5cm hexagon flowers (in a ring of six) for 20 other people.  We ran three rounds of the swap, and I was on the organising committee with a couple of other people, but the swaps were really run by Fiona Forsythe, who is @bendigolioness on Instagram and together we wrangled glue basters, thread basters and toe dippers.  

The rules were pretty simple, centres had to be white, had to have your name & an instagram "handle" if there was one, and be in the colours specified by each person in the group.  The hashtag is still around on Instagram, with over 1000 posts. The variety is fantastic & there have been some magnificent quilts made from these flowers - Fiona's beautiful Zesty Hexies won First Prize in C49 at the Bendigo Agricultural Show. 

By and large people were pretty good about sticking to giving you what you'd asked for in the sign-up, & I wanted blue and white.  I did get a few that had some red and yellow and even one that was green & black, but largely they were shades of blue and white or cream.  

Then in 2016 I had a total knee replacement, and was in hospital off my head on painkilling medication for a week or so, and apparently convinced myself that a really complex design which used lots of different hexie-based shapes was going to work really well and I spent the best part of a day with coloured pencils drawing the design up.

Thank goodness for Salley Govey (@appliqueensal) who made me realise that the variety of colours in the hexie flowers would make this complex pattern invisible.  In the midst of this, I found the most gorgeous fabric range called "Low Country Indigo" which had about six or seven dark navy prints, and a fabulous navy on white spot, and I firmed up my quilt plans.  I was going to make my ring of 6-flowers into ring of 18-flowers, and then outline each one with a ring of navy on white spots, a very tradition pattern, but one that would let the fabrics do all the talking.

My friend the lovely Mandy (@Handystitcher) started to send me fussy-cut rings made with some very interesting fabrics

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, and I kept plugging away at it, and eventually got to the point where I had enough to make a top.  

Only problem was, I'd developed arthritis in my hands, and manipulating the fabric to stitch the flowers & diamonds together was painful, and slow, and tedious.  So I stopped.  Then along came Helen (@coasttocoastquilting).  Helen had previously made me lots of sets of three in the white & navy spot which were going to form part of the mad design, and so she was across the concept of the quilt.  She was a great source of advice on how to join the blocks together, along with Jan @jaeuckens.  They were both very encouraging, but I was still a bit meh about it all, and it sat, unloved in a box, until the #elusivemrgolightly found a large lump in his abdomen in February 2020, just before COVID got stupid.  

Cue surgical biopsy, chemo, more chemo, a autologous stem cell extract & transplant, and a stay in hospital to get over that, then a locked down stay-at-home Christmas.  All through this I plugged away at building diamonds and rings of 18, because amazingly, having something productive to do with your hands is a very nice distraction from the sights, sounds & smells of the Chemo Clinic at RNSH.  

Then in July this year, when we were doubly locked down (him immunocompromised and both of us covid-fearful) & going insane, I was talking to Helen about it, confessed I had totally lost interest in it & told her that it would probably never be finished, and she very very generously offered to stitch it together for me.  I dragged it all out of the box, and sent it off to her with about two rows stitched together (see above), and all the finished diamonds & flowers.  I would get periodic instructions from Helen to "send more spotties" (the navy on white) or "make me more diamonds", and fortunately I had plenty of time to do all those things.  She posted regular updates of her progress on sewing the "Community Quilt" on her Instagram feed, if you're interested.

The quilt arrived back at my house last week, and I immediately rang Jayne Rennie, my favourite local long-arm quilter, and asked if she could quilt it before Christmas.  My timing was impeccable, as she only had a window of that week available.  Needless to say I was in the car & driving the quilt to her house before you could say "oops too late".   

It's back, but it's not on my bed until I can cut & sew the binding, (probably today) and it's much more beautiful than I imagined.

A huge Thank You to Helen for all her hard work, to Mandy for making me curse her with the glue-basting from hell but who also gave me the most magnificent of all the fussy-cut flowers: 

And to all the lovely people who contributed flowers or hexies to this quilt:

@coasttocoastquilting Helen Kingcott

@handystitcher Mandy B

And in no particular order:  

@gkmsydney Grace McDonald

@dnjjn1 Nadine

@lorenoz Michelle Watson

@fjmk Frances

@craftgodchick Larissa Hart

@prettydogvineyard Karol W (who made me rather a lot of random blue & white loose hexies)

@quilty_carlie Carlie Lincoln

@michele_kitchen Michele Wyers

@travellingdolly Lyn S

@thequiltopians Kyria

@cheezebiscuit Karen

@jenredfern Jen Redfern

@craftyrie Marie

@patchwork_gecko Julie

@rosepatch70 Cheryl Mitchell

@appliqueensal Salley Govey

@lynwotton Lyn Wotton

@urbanpolyester Jill Saunders

@mellie.h Melissa

@craftnstuff Stephanie

@bethandduke Bonnie Hazelwood

@ria140 Ria

@loubeelou76 Louisa Watts

Michelle Miller

@bendigolioness Fiona Forsythe

@joybells2012 Joy Nelson

@mysewbusylife Faye Perespkin

Donna Choyle

@rhondaym Rhonda

@patchheavenstitches Olivia Shelswell

@coleandtaffy Michelle

@Ruthc2607 Ruth Clarke

@mrsaeh Annette H

@frankiesfabrics Marni Franks

@sunflowerstitcheries Barbara Cutmore

@cathyEwbank Cathy Ewbank

@sometimesiquilt Katie Ley

@alisonwhite31 Alison White

@maggles67 Margaret

@margtrouty27 Margaret

And here it is (quilted, but unbound) - a true Community Quilt.

Oops I did it again

 Well, Gentle Readers, I've done it.  I've resigned from the day-job at the Big Bank, and I probably won't be going back, well not to that one, anyway.  Things have been ...interesting... and I took a break in February to support The Elusive Mr Golightly while he went through some really unpleasant medical stuff... but we're coming out the other side now, and I'd decided that I didn't need to go back to the office.  Having a purpose that pays is good, but it's just as good to just have a purpose.  

Anyhoo, plans change, right?  I got a call in mid-August that sounded intriguing, and basically I was offered my dream job, with hours & salary entirely my call.  Was I interested?  To be honest, apart from all the medical shit, I was very happy being retired.  I had the usual days of lockdown blah, but I've deliberately given myself lots to do so I didn't ever get bored, and I had lots and lots of things on my to-do list for when we got out of lockdown... but an opportunity like this doesn't come along every day.

I worked for this company a few years ago, enjoyed it very much & was quite sad when my contract finished & they decided to rework the structure to eliminate my role.  Funny that here we are four years later & they've been told they need the role back to be really effective.  Hah.  Coulda told 'em.

Anyhoo, I didn't even have to go for an interview; when the guy in charge heard I was available, he just said "offer her the role"...  and so hopefully I'll be starting next week.  

In other news, I've rescued a quilt, with help from the fabulous Jayne Rennie at Quilting Finesse (@quiltingfinesse on Instagram).  My mother made me this quilt as a doona cover in 1988 (as you did then???), and I think it was one of the first she made, because to be honest, it was pretty rough - within a year the seams had started to split, the stitch size was tiny (1.4mm?), there were various coloured cotton threads, and the colours weren't my thing at all, but it was made by my mother, for me, for Christmas, so I didn't feel I could just dump it!  As time went by, and I acquired more, beautiful, better made quilts made for me, in colours of my choice, this one ended up further and further towards the back of the cupboard.  We don't have a doona/duvet, instead using quilts layered to give us the perfect amount of warmth.  So it became redundant, and was relegated to an ugly ball in the back of the linen cupboard.

Cue Lockdown!  I had a big tidy-up of the linen cupboard, and took a pile of worn out sheets & towels to the textile recycling bin, and rediscovered the quilt.  First job was to remove the sheet that was the back of the doona cover. and then have a look at the blocks.  Most of them were stitched onto old hospital pillow cases (did I mention My Lovely Ma was a nurse?  Never let a chance go by oh lord):

Then I had to work out how to remove the bulk of the backing without compromising the integrity of the blocks... in some cases the seams were so tiny (1/16") that the whole block had to be taken apart & restitched.  I also ditched the entire strippy border, but I did manage to salvage some bits of that for another project.  Then I squared all the blocks up & made them a standard size, then I restitched it together using a tiny sprigged print in a rich cream... totally my mother.

Then I took it up to Jayne Rennie at Quilting Finesse & she quilted it using the Baptist Fan pattern, and it looks amazing (if wonky (my fault, not hers!)!)!

Now I have to bind it (it's going to join the Snake Trail Surprise which is in the cupboard waiting to be bound) & I have an idea to use some French General creams & beiges to do it.  I think My Lovely Ma would be very pleased.