Such kindness!

I have followed Jo's blog butter z for a while. Jo lives in Victoria, Australia and for most of the year I live in the very centre of England.  For three months each year I live in New Zealand, so I am geographically a little closer to Jo.  We have never met - except in cyber space - but exchange quite a few emails and comment on each other's blog posts.  As a result I feel I "know" Jo and consider her to be one of my quilting friends. Jo has also sent me some lovely hand stitched Christmas tree decorations which hang in pride of place on our Christmas tree.

Jo read one of my recent posts saying I was running out of 2.5" scrap squares for my Twinkler blocks and, guess what I received in the post?  A packet of squares!

Mixed with some of the leftover squares I had, I have managed to sort out colour sets for 16 more Twinkler blocks!

So, Jo, THANK YOU!  You really are such a kind lady, your kind thought is very much appreciated.
Postage these days is prohibitively expensive so I appreciate you gift even more.

There are lots left over, including lots of neutral squares and I have two ideas for using those. That will be when I'm back in the UK where I have lots more squares waiting to join their Aussie cousins.  The rest of Jo's coloured squares will be mixed with my English stash for lots more Twinklers.

In the meantime those 16 Twinklers wait for me to sew them up.
My husband always comments that Quilting ladies are all lovely people - and he has met a few over the past 20 years I have been quilting.  And do you know what?............
He's absolutely right!

Overcoming jet lag and exploring connections

We arrived back in our home in Warwickshire late on Sunday night after a weekend's travelling from New Zealand. It's a long journey, over 12,000 miles.

We have spent a wonderful three months on the other side of the world and now we're back, picking up the reins of life here in the UK. It has been lovely to see our daughter, son-in-law and beautiful little granddaughter who was so excited when we went to have dinner with them on Monday that she went pink in the face and literally jumped up and down on the spot - just like Tigger!

So now we are trying to overcome jet lag! On Monday night we suddenly crashed and had to go to bed at 7.30pm. I did quite well on Tuesday, managing to stay awake until 10.30pm which meant I slept through till 6am. Last night it was back to feeling weird (tired out, not thinking straight) so off to bed at 8.30pm.  Having these too-early bedtimes means we are awake for ridiculous periods during the middle of the night.

So, what do I do?  Look at my iPad, gaze at Flickr pages, flit from BlogSpot to BlogSpot.
This brings up some very interesting connections:
I have had a Flickr page ( Koshka2 ) since September 2009, quite a long time.  Over the years I have 'Favorited" many photos, 2,737 in total! During one of my extended wakeful periods I looked back through my Favourites.

Firstly it was very evident from my choices what sort of things appeal to me:  Bright, Scrappy, Stars, Log cabins, Applique ( not the Baltimore style, more naïve flowers ), String Quilts, Pictorial Styles ( like Gwen Marston or Freddy Moran would produce ), Coin Quilts etc.

And then if you look at the quilts I make, there are the same themes again.  No surprise there, I guess.

And my Favourites include many creations from blogs or Flickr people I follow:
Blue Mountain Daisy, Little Island Quilting, s.o.t.a.k. handmade, I'm a ginger monkey, niftyquilts, Elmosmate, Helene408, roccogal, Mary@Molly Flanders, littleguineapigs, Linda Rotz Miller Quilts, Peoniagialla and many more.  If these folk are new to you, check them out on Flickr - you will be in for a treat.

During my nightly flitting though blogs I discovered a new name, Mary Johnson.  Her blog is MaryQuilts.com or, if you Google "Mary Johnson blog quilts" you find a different blog of Mary's with another whole pathway of links to follow. An Aladdin's Cave!
I spent ages and ages scrolling back through Mary's blog, following her older posts, her Links, Instruction sheets, her tips for improving your quilts and so on.  Along the way I found her HeartString section, quilts she and many other people following her instructions, make for many different charities.  Here I found a definite connection as one of my recent finishes was a String Quilt which I named "Heartstrings".  How about that for a connection? I emailed Mary and received a lovely long email reply. So kind.

I am off to my Patchwork group this morning. It will be lovely to meet up with old friends again and catch up with their news and see what they are currently working on.  Me?  No quilting as I haven't been in my sewing room yet but I do have some knitting that I started in NZ when I hadn't yet started a new quilt.  It's a white basket weave style premature baby-size blanket which, when finished, will be donated to our local hospital. I am accumulating a stash of items to take: premature sized quilts and little knitted hats.

Highs and lows

At the end of last year we learned that a lovely NZ friend was seriously ill and we really did not expect to see her again.  However, much to our joy she was still with us when we arrived in February and we made a visit to see her our priority - first thing we did this time back in NZ.

She looked so much better than we feared and everyone felt there was hope.  So, I came straight home and made this quilt which I imagined she would wrap around her in the winter months ahead.

 

I called it Heartstrings.

 

I literally had about 18" of binding to stitch down and to make a label when we heard the sad news that our dear friend had gone downhill and was fading fast.  I finished the quilt and made a different label to the one I had planned.

 

On Friday we went to her amazing funeral: a large church filled to overflowing with her dear family and friends. I gifted my quilt to her husband and their two children in the hope that the many strings, colours and patterns will remind them of the dear lady who has gone.  She was a rainbow of delight, a personality of many facets.

 

From that low point I came home to read a blog from Jo in Australia.  I feel we are "blog friends" as part of her journey through life echoes mine.  She recently very kindly sent me a crochet pattern and a sample of how it looked. As thanks I sent her a little gift too and I was so pleased to see the post where she mentions this gift. I was very touched. Thank you, Jo.

 

Take a look at Jo's blog, always something new to see as she is a prolific crafter:

 

jobutterfield.blogspot.com

 

So, highs and lows with the common thread of friendship and sewing.