Among my souvenirs {The Pymble Quilt}

I have another quilt to share with you before I fold it up and pop it into a removalist box to do what quilts do best: protect things that are rather fragile (whether they’re animate or inanimate).

The Pymble Quilt isn’t the work of my hands. It was a gift, made for me by many beautiful friends from St Swithun’s Anglican Church at Pymble in Sydney as a farewell gift. The year was 1992, my husband had been the rector there for 10 years, and we were moving on to St Andrew’s Cathedral where he would take up the position of Dean of Sydney.

This quilt holds so many memories of our time living at Pymble!

It was during that time I had my first travel article published after a particularly wonderful stay in Florence. My friend Shirley chose to embroider the Duomo, adding the final sentence of my article.

Deirdre made this one, representing our playgroup. She sneakily enlisted my mother’s help to get me to hand over some scraps from my own fabric stash.

Roey knows I always need to be reminded of this. We’re still firm friends, by the way. In fact I’ll be having lunch with her tomorrow.

The comfortable house that was home to us and our three children for 10 years. Joy embroidered this.

Jane’s cross stitch friendship hearts remind me of so many friends.

Melanie’s silk ribbon rosebuds must have taken many hours!

My initials have never been represented as elegantly as here in this block embroidered by Sandy.

And just in case I should forget who was responsible for each block as I grow older, someone thoughtfully embroidered this grid on the quilt backing.

Many others, less confident about sewing a block by themselves, still managed to make a few hand quilting stitches, and their names were embroidered on a pick satin ribbon and sewn to the backing as well.

For 21 years the Pymble Quilt has hung in pride of place on walls in our two subsequent homes, but as I’m downsizing rather drastically I doubt there will be a large enough wall to hang it in my next home.

Perhaps I’ll finally wrap myself in it, and it can protect this rather fragile quilter.

 Di