FIFTY years after it was started, a hand-stitched quilt has finaly been completed, thanks to crafters who laboured over it during lockdown.
Maggie Else, from the Midlands, discovered the part-made quilt while clearing the home of her recently deceased aunt.
She contacted her friend Julia Nelson, a member of the Carlbeck Community Centre, in Lunedale, to see if anyone would be interested in completing the quilt. Fellow Carlbeck Centre member Amanda Thomas, from Mickleton, agreed to help take on the challenge with help and advice from other members including Caroline Upton.
Mrs Thomas said: “I am a machine quilter and this was a hand-stitched quilt, so I was well out of my comfort zone.
“Working on it has been a fascinating journey, one that has allowed me to honour someone’s else handiwork and conception. It’s been a privilege to make creative decisions about what was possible with the remnants that were left and hope they honoured and complemented the original.”
Ms Else’s aunt had made more than 80 sets of “Grandmother’s Flowers Garden’ units consisting of 19 hexagons but had never pulled them together into a quilt. Mrs Thomas said: “It came in a whole jumble of boxes. I got the initial ones full of hexagons and then three months later I got another three boxes with vintage material.
“I spent a good 24 hours playing with different layout patterns and sending emails to Maggie to see what she thought. It took just under a year to do, during lockdown, but that wasn’t working on it all the time.”
After agreeing on a finished design, Mrs Thomas had the painstaking task of removing all of the “newspaper” templates from the hexagons, before she could attempt to stitch the quilt to together.
Another six days were spent carefully tacking the three layers of the quilt together before embarking on the traditional quilting effect.
Mrs Thomas was able to utilise vintage material supplied by Ms Else to create the edging and backing for the quilt. When lockdown restrictions eased at the beginning of last month, Mrs Thomas travelled to the Midlands to reunite the completed quilt with Ms Else and her cousins.
She said: “The quilt was the glue that kept us all together during lockdown. It was a magical experience working on the quilt and there is enough material scraps left over to do another quilt as well. I have suggested to Maggie I could put one together for the family, but not using a hexagon design.”
