A Kindred Spirit

I had a kindred spirit, a soulmate, a very good friend in Cheryl Hughes. We met over 30 years ago when she came to live in Halifax with her husband Peter. They were posted here on a transfer with the British Navy for a few years and Cheryl wanted to learn how to quilt - she came to a Mayflower Quilters Guild meeting and thus began a 30+ year friendship.

Cheryl, Peter, Rebecca and Ian (2006) at Fox Point

While Cheryl was here she became a wonderful quilter, a stab stitch quilter and a respected member of our Guild. She jumped in and volunteered at every chance she could. When she moved back to England she was instrumental in starting a Guild there near where she lived. It is still going strong today. She has taught at many Guilds in England, a teacher by training she excelled at teaching patchwork and quilting.

We visited back and forth over the years, we mourned together the loss of our parents, we celebrated the birth of her two children and our 5 grandchildren, we mourned the loss of our grandson, we celebrated the wonderful accomplishments of all our children. We have been through a lot together but the last 3 years and her battle with breast cancer showed me a courageous side of her that I will admire for the rest of my life. She fought this disease with strength, courage and dignity but she left far too soon. I wrote a bit about our last visit together here. I will miss her immensely, I will cherish the memories.

"Friends are like stars, you don't have to see them to know they are there".

Quilt Mafia Meets Again

Fifteen of the Quilt Mafia gathered at Laurie Swim's in Lunenburg this week and we had a great day of sharing, talking and eating! As always the conversation was varied and interesting, the food delicious and the quilts/knitting/works of art that everyone was working on or had completed were fantastic. What an amazing group!

So many were wearing hand knit socks! This wasn't all!

There was some conversation around "should we or shouldn't we be known as the Quilt Mafia"? I don't have a problem with it but then I was around when Polly's Dan first started calling her quilt friends "the quilt mafia" and it just stuck! I was surprised the other day when I found out by searching google that we aren't the only ones who use that term. The Fons family of quilters - Marianne, her daughter Mary also refer to themselves as the "quilt mafia family". It is found here as "fabric mafia" in a conversation with Lynne Edwards. Just googling the term brings up other links! Who knew we were so ground breaking way back then?

It was wonderful to be surrounded by Laurie's art quilts. You can read/see more about her here. I especially loved her new series, yet to be named but using the image of the fish stores in Blue Rocks.

Here is a picture I took a few years ago of one of the fish stores in Blue Rocks, near Lunenburg.

I think Laurie captured it perfectly.

Cove Quilter's "Winter" Challenge #7

Our next challenge was suggested by long distance member Heather Stewart and her chosen theme was "Winter". Heather sent us each a little plastic bag with about 6 snwoflake buttons and a piece of tone on tone white fabric that had a bit of a shimmer. It kid of looked like fresh fallen snow on a really cold day, the crunchy kind! She asked us to use the them "Winter", use at least one button and some of the fabric somewhere.

Unfortunately Heather couldn't be with us the day we had our grand reveal, she was moving that day and in another province! Heather did mail me her challenge...

Heather's challenge - machine embroidered and machine quilted. These challenges are all approximately 12"x12".

My challenge "Snow Apples" was machine pieced, machine quilted and hand embroidered.

Here are all 8 challenges with Sandra and Donna at our March meeting of the Mahone Bay Quilters Guild.

Our next challenge has been issued by Donna and the theme will be "Flowers". This will be a tough one, I have way too many ideas. The rest of the challenges are here on my Flickr page. They are all wonderful!