Today’s Quilter – September 2019

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COUNTRYSIDE QUILTING l delightful daisies

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students from all over the world

attend and, although I have

never been on one of Janet’s

classes myself, I find her work

tremendously inspiring.

Quilting for a cause

One of my first daisy quilts

was made at the time of the

Boscastle flood. I decided that

it would be nice to do

something to help the poor

people of Boscastle, some of

whom had lost everything.

It was so lucky that nobody

was seriously hurt and the

rescue services were truly

amazing, air lifting people

from their homes. I shall

never forget the colour of the

sky that day, such a wicked

blue that we could see from whereI live 15 milesaway

• not that we could have guessed exactly what was
  happening. A few days later, I drew a daisy design and
  asked people to make blocks for a quilt and, within
  two weeks, we had enough blocks to make one big
  rae quilt and nine more quilts which we gave to
  local people who had to leave their houses.
  Around nine years ago, Moda fabrics brought out
  a Think Pink collection in aid of breast cancer. When
  the fabric arrived in the shop, I was somewhat taken
  aback by the very bright bubble-gum pink. This was
  when I first thought of occasionally using the back
  of the fabric, or even slightly tea dyeing it, just to tone
  it down a bit. The girls helped me sew everything and
  together we came up with the Daisies in May quilt,
  which Beryl Cadman quilted beautifully for me. It
  went on her stand in Birminghamat The Festival
  of Quilts and I’m so proud to say that we managed
  to raise over £5000 for the Cancer Research UK
  (CRUK), which was just really wonderful. My ladies
  from Rock then went onto make a second quilt, which
  also made a lot of money for CRUK – if a quilt is
  appealing it never seems hard to sell tickets!

A world of inspiration

When I decided to make Dancing with Daisies,

I was driving to Truro early one day in the gentle

morning sun between the daisies, which seemed

to be dancing in the breeze at the side of the road.

For one of my books, I made a new daisy design in

brightpinks,bluesandgreysandI hada lovelyvintage

indigospotfabric,whichI usedaroundthetwocentre

blocksastheywerecuta littletoosmall.Thismadea

veryspecialfeatureandI reallylovethequilt.I then

reducedthesizeof thedaisy,madethreedierent

sizedtemplatesandusedtheseformachinequilting

thedesignwitha variegatedthread.I managedto

movefromonedaisytotheotherwithoutending

andusedwoolinthequiltwhichmakesthequilting

standoutnicely.Thiswastheearlydaysof mydaisy

quilting,andI completelyadoredtheeectandshared

theseideaswithSandyChandlerwhenshequilted

my Dancing with Daisies quilt, which she did so

wonderfully. The more you study a subject, the more

you learn (and want to learn) and try to improve for

the next quilt etc. So, up pops a second quilt which

is called Over the Hills and Far Away – I’m really

delighted with this quilt and, as I write this column,

I am just finishing the edge of it ready for the NEC!

Doing the design made me think about how many

dierent types of shapes and sized daisy there are

• whether they have round ends or pointed, domed
  middles or flat. I love the challenge of finding fabrics

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“The more you study a subject,

the more you learn (and want to

learn) and try to improve...”