OK, so I sent my entry in for the Australian Cotton Fibre Expo. Actually, I sent in photos and paperwork, which is all that’s required at this stage, and I have to admit that the piece isn’t actually finished. It’s finished enough that I was able to take photos of it though, and it doesn’t have to be sent in until April, so I have a little time yet. I’m pleased with the way it’s gone so far, and pretty confident that it will turn out looking the way I want it to, so fingers crossed!

I need to be strict with myself and finish it before I go on with anything else, or at least start anything else. I’ve already got one project on the go, but that’s a long term thing. It’s a quilt, done in the English method using papers, of hexagons which I think are about 2 inches across, or about 5 cms. I haven’t yet stopped to calculate how many I will need to make for a double bed sized quilt, but I think it will be well over a thousand. I’ll be stitching this all by hand, so you can understand why it’s a long term project! It will be all made from either old clothes, or left over bits from making clothes or other things, so I’m digging through my stash. I’ve been sewing for over 40 years, and mostly when I’ve made something I don’t throw away the scraps, so I think I will have plenty of fabric. I want to go back to the origins of patchwork, when it was a way of using up scraps of old fabric and the good bits of old clothes. Whilst I also love lots of the quilt fabrics which are available today, and have succumbed to some of them for other projects, I have a slight problem with going out to buy yards of new fabric, bringing it home to cut up and stitch back together again. It doesn’t sit too well with the whole ‘use less’ philosophy which I try to live by.

Another inspiration for the quilt is that my Mum made one back in the 1970s. Hers is the same, made of bits of my old dresses, and hers, and she and my Dad still have it on their bed. Her hexagons are smaller though, which makes it even more laudable. I talked to her about it recently, and she told me that one of the patches was from my Dad’s ‘demob’ shirt, in other words the shirt from the suit of clothes he was given when he was demobilised from his National Service in the UK, about 1948 I should think. That patch is wearing thin now, but after about 65 years that’s not surprising! Now I come to think of it, some of the fabric I am going to use will be about 30 years old already, so it only has 35 years to go.

My next short term project might be a quilt for my daughter’s engagement, and for that I shall succumb to browsing the internet for fabric. I want some with themes to cover their interests, so that means hours spent on the net looking for just the right thing. I can’t wait!