Let's get blogging again!

I'm truly sorry for the "radio silence" here over recent months. If you follow me on Instagram (@darlingdi) you'll know I'm still alive and quilting, taking photos, working and spending time with family, friends and my gorgeous labrador, Chester (@chesterthewonderlab). 

If not, I hope I can fill in the gaps for you soon, as I break into a rather breathless and ungainly run in an effort to catch up.

If there's one thing guaranteed to spur me into blogging, it's the opportunity to praise my friends, in this case all the wonderful quilters, past and present, who have been part of St Mark's Quilters. 

Last week marked a rather special anniversary for us. 

It was eight years since the Sunday when did something very unusual for me! I stood up in our church (eek!) and announced to a full congregation, consisting of exactly two quilters (myself and Di B), that we were about to hold a Stitchin' Mission, five weeks of beginner quilt making classes, to be taught by my friend Linda Hungerford. 

You can read the background here . 

Di B and I (Team Di) had each made sample quilts in the weeks leading up to that Sunday reveal, and had them on display, with a clip board on hand to sign up those keen to be part of our venture.

Something amazing happened!

Two dozen eager beginner quilt makers came forward to learn to make a quilt for the children enrolling at the brand new KU Marcia Burgess Autism Specific Early Learning and Care Centre (these days known as "The Marcia"), many experienced quilters offered to be helpers in the classes, and several other friends made quilts to the specifications required, to add to the number.

Heatwave conditions on the last day of class did nothing to dampen the enthusiasm of these generous-hearted ladies, seen here with the results of their work. 

Linda's infectious enthusiasm had made the 5 week course so much fun that quite a few wanted to continue, and so St Mark's Quilters was born.

Over the intervening years a few quilters have come and gone, but we've retained a core bunch of around 12 to 15 ladies who come from near and far to stitch and share friendships on the second Saturday of the month from Feb to November.

We've broadened our vision and now also make tiny Blankets of Love and humidicrib covers for Royal Prince Alfred Hospital's Newborn Intensive Care Unit.

If you have a little time, you might be interested in clicking on the Pages tabs to see some of the creations of our little group, an estimated 800+ quilts (not all photographed). Not bad for a group that grew from almost nothing!

Di B and I are thankful for Linda's initial boost and teaching, and proud to be part of this diverse but passionate group, whose ages from youngest to oldest range over 60 years.

Before I leave you (but not for long!) I'd like to show you my latest quilt finish for The Marcia. 

I can't claim to have pieced the quilt top, having found it as an "orphan" languishing in our SMQ stash, but it made me smile with the clever fabric choices someone made, and deserved to be finally finished.

I quilted it (in the ditch) and bound it, and here it is, proving that a quilt doesn't have to be complicated to become a potential treasure for a little child.

We don't usually give our community quilts a name, but I thought I'd make an exception this time and call it "Frogs Just Want to Have Fun". 

(Apologies for the Cyndi Lauper ear worm that will probably stay with you all day!)

Quilts in the Church

What better season can there be than Christmas, when we celebrate Gods great love for us, to festoon our church with quilts, gifts of love made by St Mark's Quilters.

These larger, crib sized quilts, will soon be off to the KU Marcia Burgess Autism Specific Early Learning and Care Centre at Liverpool where each little boy or girl will be given one of our quilts when they start there this year.

I love how our quilts look with such a beautiful backdrop!

Then there are the Blankets of Love, around 60cm square, each destined to one day wrap around a tiny baby in Royal Prince Alfred Hospital's Newborn Intensive Care Unit.

Some of these bubs will be struggling to live. But some will not have survived their birth, and the quilt will either go with them when their parents say goodbye, or become a keepsake, a lasting memory of their precious little baby.

Either way, these grieving parents will know that a quilter at St Mark's cared enough to stitch love into a quilt especially to comfort them.

We hung up to nine quilts on each sandstone column, suspended by their corners, and the overall effect was amazing. 

With fresh flowers up in the sanctuary, red bows on the pew ends, and a glittering Christmas tree beside the font, the church looked incredibly beautiful, all dressed for Christmas.

Here's how it looked later that evening, as the choir processed in to our Carols Service by candlelight singing "Once in Royal David's City".

But it was when the lights were turned on that our quilts really shone.

Our quilters choose their own colour combinations from the stash of appropriate fabrics we've collected, even sometimes adding fabrics from their own stashes to achieve the end result. What you don't see, though, is the metres and metres of batting that goes inside  our quilts, something that would be very expensive indeed if our quilters had buy their own.

We like to think of this cuddly inner layer as the heart of our quilts, making them soft and comforting.

Ever since we began, the members of Rotary Inner West have given us a generous donation towards our batting each year, for which we're incredibly grateful. 

While the quilts were hanging in the church Di B and I invited President Fay Thurlow, along with Sandra Bloxham, member of the Board of Directors, for a private tour to see the quilts hanging in St Mark's, followed by morning tea in the church garden. 

We were delighted that they presented us with a cheque, in memory of a member of our church family, Peter Crooks, who was also a member of Rotary Inner West and passed away in September. Peter was very supportive of the ministry of St Mark's Quilters, so it was quite an emotional occasion for us all.

This year we hope to keep on encouraging our keen group of quiltmakers to keep trying out new quilting techniques as they develop their creativity and, at the same time, bring a warm quilty hug to those who need it.

We love because God first loved us.

Kaffe Snowballs for an Archbishop's Wife - Beautiful Beginnings

This is the story of the creation of a very special quilt. I project managed it, but the heavy lifting was done by dozens of women working together, designing, shopping for fabric, stitching, and contributing financially towards the batting and backing fabric, the big ticket items. 

Then there's the most generous contribution of all, that of our amazingly gifted long arm quilter, Linda Billett (Artisan Quilting)who took our cobbled together collection of blocks and made them into a stunning quilt, fit for an Archbishop's wife.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. 

A little less than two years before our Anglican (Episcopal) Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, was due to retire, the Sydney ministry wives decided to make a quilt as a retirement gift for his wife, Christine.

Whether it was because I'd played a part in the making of farewell gifts from the ministry wives for the three previous Archbishops, or whether it was obvious that, when it comes to making quilts together, 'I'm just a gal who can't say no', I quickly found myself heading up a small but enthusiastic committee of women whose husbands, like mine, were Anglican ministers in Sydney.

We began by meeting for coffee at my home to toss around design ideas. 

Our quilt needed to -

* Reflect Christine's love of the colour blue, and her interests which range from children's literature to grandchildren, flowers and gardens, hospitality, travel, reading, and of course the friends she and Peter have made over the years in their various parishes. 

* Consist of parts that could be easily separated for many stitchers to work on independently.

* Be an easily achievable pattern for stitchers of any skill level.

Finally we agreed our inspiration would be the Wedding Snowball Quilt from Kaffe Fassett's V & A Quilts.

We bought a selection of navy fabrics for the corner triangles of our (6.5in unfinished) snowball blocks, cut them into 2.5in strips, and sent these to our volunteers with instructions to make the blocks. We asked them to use fabrics from their own stashes as the feature fabrics, only specifying that these should be predominantly blue.

What a wonderful assortment of blocks came back to us after 6 months! Butterflies, maps of the world, teacups and teapots, children, tiny footprints, lots of flowers, and a handful of these exquisitely hand embroidered blocks featuring churches where Peter and Christine served.

The real excitement came when we laid the blocks out and saw how well such a diverse collection played together.

Tweaking the layout, swapping and reswapping to get the balance just right, took some time, and this was where it was valuable having many eyes to spot the problem areas.

Finally we were happy with the layout.

Working on the assembly as a team, it was vital that we sewed the blocks together exactly as planned, so every block was labelled with a letter and a number on a tiny scrap of masking tape, and the blocks were stacked in rows ready for machining.

We made great progress.

And by the end of the day we had an almost-complete queen sized quilt top!

The paparazzi were keen to capture the moment.

Some were a tad keener than others 😊

Our top just needed a border, and we found the perfect French stripe in Les Olivades, but with life taking an unexpected turn it was to be a few months before I added a thin strip of navy and then the wide mitred border to finish our quilt in style.

Next time I'll show you our fabulous finish!

Good food, friends, family, and a little fabrication

That was my Easter, a million times better than the last one.

Only in retrospect can I appreciate how truly wretched I was feeling at this time last year, still numb with shock from Boak's untimely death, surrounded by towers of removalist boxes, tearfully watching pieces of precious (to me) furniture leaving my home in the hands of eBay buyers, and rattling around in a large rectory with draughts, dust and overflowing drains, the collateral damage from major bathroom renovations.

As an unashamed non-cook these days, I can't believe how much food came from my kitchen over the course of the four days of Easter.

First was a crockpot of pumpkin soup, my contribution to our church's Maundy Thursday supper. With the help of Glad Wrap under the lid and my 'old lady trolley' I managed to wheel it down to the car and get it there without losing a drop in transit!

Easter Day's morning tea at church called for something sweet, and with Anzac Day approaching I baked a batch of our Aussie favourite, Anzac biscuits.

My sister and I have started a tradition of bringing afternoon tea to our mother on Easter Day, and this year our brother Phil, and sister-in-law Judy, joined us. My other brother, David, was unavoidably detained on Mount Everest :-)

The Easter Bunny even put in an appearance. 

Someone might have gone a little crazy with the yellow chickens - and there wasn't a child in sight!

More of my Anzac biscuits and an Apple Sour Cream Slice were my contributions to the fare. I just had to share this picture of one of my two pretty Prue Trollope oven mitts, a housewarming gift from Di B last year and pressed into service in a big way this weekend.

The Apple Sour Cream Slice is my easy, go-to recipe whenever something sweet is called for. Its crunchy biscuity base combines well with the soft, creamy apple topping and as it cooks the aroma of nutmeg wafts through the house in such a comforting way. 

On Monday I made it again, this time in a gluten free version to take to an informal dinner party. I'll post the recipe shortly.

In between all this cooking (and eating) I managed to put the finishing touches to my knitted Peppa Pig. Appropriate, eh?

To top it off the sun shone for an Indian summer, and the wonders of modern horticultural trickery gave us potted golden daffodils blooming in autumn.

How was your Easter?