Blogger's Quilt Festival Autumn 2010

It's that time again! Time for the Blogger's Quilt Festival!

Amy over at Amy's Creative Side hosts this wonderful Online Quilt Festival twice a year, thanks so much Amy! This is my third time participating, and seeing as I haven't completed any large quilts since the Spiderweb I featured in the spring, I thought I would show you an older quilt that I have never posted about.

Regular readers will will probably recognise this Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt as it is the one featured on my header above. I actually finished it nearly 2 years ago, a few months before I started this blog, but it took me 7 years to complete! There is quite a nice story as too way I started making it in the first place, so if you are sitting comfortably...

Almost 9 years ago, a very close friend of mine, Donna, became seriously ill with a strange infection. She was in intensive care and they had basically run out of ideas as to what was wrong and how to save her, she was hours from dying when one of the doctors found a match to her symptoms on the internet (4 other people in the world were documented with this bug) and a way to save her. Another big hooray for the invention of the internet!!
So Donna got better but she had a long stay in hospital (which involved me joining her there for a night after a car accident, but that is another story!), and when she got home she was still so weak that she needed a long convalescence.

I really wanted to do something for Donna to help her through this really tough time, so I decided to give her the gift of patchwork. Donna had never made a quilt before but she wasn't averse to sewing and I knew she could manage some paper piecing.
A hexie was the first quilt I ever started and I had loved the hand sewing, collecting fabric remnants, and watching it grow (I STILL haven't finished quilting that quilt, after 20 odd years, but you can take a peek at it here). So I put together a kit with a ton of paper hexagons, a little booklet I wrote with instructions and diagrams, and then I got my stash of fabric out and started cutting out a big pile of hexagons.

Now this was in the period right between what I like to call my 'first age of quilting' and my 'second age of quilting'. I wasn't really doing much crafts at all, I was busy with our business and also writing fiction. I had been really obsessed with making art quilts, but I think I peeked too soon! So at this stage I was only making quilts for the odd gift and they were the quickest, easiest ones I could manage.
When I started cutting out the hexagon shapes for Donna, I started to get excited about my fabrics again. I had made quite a pile when I realised that I was getting jealous of that pile, I wanted to make a hexie quilt again too! So I started cutting another pile for me!

Donna really loved her patchwork kit and I think it helped her get through months of being too weak to do much more than a little hand sewing. She still hasn't finished it ( I like to think of it as a 'sister quilt' to mine) but I got her to send me a photo of it anyway.

Meanwhile, I spent the next 7 years turning the hexies into a Grandmother's Flower Garden Quilt. I loved the portability of it, being able to pick it up in odd moments for a bit of comfort sewing, and buying some new fabrics for it! By the time I had started hand quilting it I had fallen in love with quilt making again!

This is a really special quilt to me as it is the one that lives on our bed and that we sleep under everynight. I love to gaze at it as I drink my coffee in bed in the morning (I have the BEST husband in the world who brings me a capuccino with chocolate sprinkles every day!), different fabric combinations are always catching my eye and inspiring me.
I would happily start another one of these as, like a good book, I loved making it so much I didn't want to finish it. Maybe I should volunteer to finish Donna's for her?!
Right, seeing as you have all sat so nicely listening to my story, you can now click through to Amy's Quilt Festival and check out the hundreds of other amazing quilts listed! Thanks for your time!