The Quilts of Abundance

Late in 2010, my friend Veronicah was the recipient of 17 - count 'em 17 - banana boxes of mixed fabrics from a deceased estate. After much sorting and appropriate donation, she made up a box each for some quilting buddies. Sharing the love!


I'm a lucky possessor of one of these Boxes of Abundance. It holds a fairly random mixture of approximately shirt-weight cottonish fabrics from (I think) the middle 1980's. Not exactly what I would normally choose to work with.

My - self-imposed - challenge is using it to make quilts for my big patchwork group's community quilt donation programme. This has been far more enjoyable than expected.

  1. Free fabric is much easier to cut!
  2. Funny combinations work when they have to
  3. I'm not doing it alone - all the other people who have passed this fabric along are sharing in the eventual gift
I'll document these quilts on their own page.  What is your challenge?

Pharmaceutical Comforter

It all started at St Joseph's Primary School. Back then "fundraising" was known as "collecting for the Missions". What we collected was tinfoil. I doubt any of my class knew what the Missions were doing, or how our tinfoil would help, but we religiously collected each bottletop (remember them!).

Fastforward at least 30 years to me looking at my foil medication packets. No way can I treat them like rubbish. They represent the best strategy yet in managing my disordered mind... and they're tinfoil! And look, they're layered, with air in the middle. In a grid format. Kinda like a quilt really. So, the inevitable quilt project begins

This one has to be functional, of course. Blister packs are a bit stiff and scratchy to make a quilt that is nice to sleep under. After a few samples I decide on a simple half-square triangle block embellished with a packet.

It's very boring in the middle phase of making and embellishing all the blocks. Now that is done I'm enjoying playing with different layouts. Here's my favourite so far



More about the making of Pharmaceutical Comforter