Love in action

The quilts were all hung from the columns with care,

T’was time for our beautiful handwork to share

It’s been three years since St Mark’s Quilters decked out the church for Christmas with our quilts, and Di B and I felt it was about time we held another airing of the quilts. Fortunately our Acting Rector agreed, so last Sunday many willing hands transformed the church in time for our service of Lessons and Carols that evening.

Perdita balanced on a pew to hook up some Blankets of Love.

Caroline helped us to choose effective combinations of colours and quilt designs to hang from each column.

Moo attached dozens of safety pins to the corners of our quilts so they could be hung from their points.

They did look wonderful against the sandstone columns, with the bright coronet of lights above them.

 

 

 

 

We even hung quilts from the baptismal font

…and from the pulpit.

In fact, we were quite inventive in searching out fixtures where our quilts could hang. Even though we didn’t have enough Marcia Burgess kindy quilts to fill the gallery at the rear of the church, Moo and Gail mixed these larger quilts with our tiny Blankets of Love.

This was the view from St Mark’s gallery once we’d finished – very pretty!

A panoramic view from the sanctuary end of the church looking back towards the gallery.

In the evening, though, it was even prettier, filled with worshippers standing beneath our quilts, singing Christmas carols.

Now that Christmas is over we’ve carefully packed our quilts away ready for delivery to RPA Newborn Care in the next few weeks, where the parents of very ill or deceased bubs will be given the opportunity to choose a baby quilt to keep.

Which one would you choose?

  Di

Access all areas

Our outdoor Carols in the Domain in Sydney is one of those annual traditions I hold dear, not least because it’s run by my friend Robyn Hobbs who has raised millions of dollars for the Salvation Army over the years.

Every year Robyn invites a small number of friends (including our little Princess and her parents) to enjoy the concert with the benefits of VIP reserved seating, and before-and after-show refreshments, usually on a balmy summer evening.

This year was just a little more special for me because it was the 30th Carols in the Domain and Robyn asked me to take photos of the evening with her new iPad so she would have her own personal souvenir slideshow of the night. Look at my title for the night!

 

Clothed in a very brief authority indeed – a serious photographer would have used a DSLR instead of an iPad - I was able to go backstage and take photos of performers like the Wiggles and Captain Feathersword with the Princess.

When Robyn took to the stage with her short message about the real meaning of Christmas, and dedicated this year’s show to her mother Betty and my husband Boak, both of whom passed away this year, I was behind her capturing part of the amazing 100,000 strong crowd.

 

 

I was able to take photos of the performers from right in front of the stage. That’s Robyn in blue, standing behind Georgie Parker, Jay Laga’aia and Santa Claus during the exciting finale.

And as always the fireworks were spectacular!

Well done, Robyn!

  Di

Three little words

The moment I saw them on the supermarket shelf I knew I had to have them to decorate the lunch table at our final St Mark’s Quilters (Darling Point, Sydney) Saturday workshop for the year.

If ever there were three words that sum up the message of Christmas, here they are.

While we enjoyed an al fresco lunch together I took the opportunity to share how, for me, believing that the baby born in a shed to a poor Jewish couple more than 2000 years ago was indeed God “with skin on” gives me hope for the future, and peace here and now.

Nobody manages to sail through an entire year without some challenges, but this year has thrown up some biggies for a few of us. I think a good measure of hope and peace was on all our Christmas wish lists, so you can imagine we were all a tad emotional by the time I’d said my short piece (or rather, read it from my DiPad ‘cos I’m not too clever at speaking and I  was afraid I’d forget what I wanted to say!).

But just when I thought I could sit down Di B thrust a bundle of Kaffe fabric, in the shape of a book, into my hands, and as I lapsed, mouth gaping, into a half-decent impression of a stunned mullet she explained what it was all about.

Over the previous 2 months she had mobilised these amazing women to make pages for a fabric book of messages to me. She had done it entirely without my knowledge, and everyone had managed to keep the project a complete secret from me. My ears weren’t even burning!

Such a unique and special gift deserves its own blog post (soon) where I’ll show you the beautiful pages in detail. This is one incredible gift!

But it must be said these friends of mine are quite remarkable women.

As usual we weren’t short of delicious sweet treats to keep up our energy levels!

There was even some creative activity going on. Ruth, who came all the way from her new home in Canberra just for the day, attached the binding to a kindy quilt.

Kirstin, who is knitting a baby quilt in the finest, softest cotton yarn, settled on a layout, and I helped her to package up her knitted squares in labelled rows for storage, to make the stitching together easier.

Helen, meanwhile, was making great progress with her pretty and fresh hand-pieced hexagon baby quilt.

“Santa Di” made an appearance too, with our Christmas gifts of pincushions – even for the naughty ones!

Wherever in the world you are reading my blog right now, the St Mark’s Quilters, along with Di B and myself, want to wish you a Christmas full of hope, peace, and the unshakeable belief that the God who made the universe cares deeply for you.

Yes, you!

 Di

Coming out of hiding, and helping out with a little knit-ivity

There’s been a little (kindly) bleating lately in response to my blog neglect. I won’t name names – ewe know who ewe are .

So I’ve crawled out from beneath the enormous pile of paperwork that has kept me occupied of late to tell you what I’ve been up to creatively.

{“So, what’s with the sheep?”}

There’s much to do as I prepare to downsize, and while I have a tendency to whine about the size of the challenge it has indeed been helpful to have a task to focus on. I love spending time with my friends and my beautiful family too.

But every now and then, like when I look into my supermarket trolley of purchases for a household of one, I find myself again quite overcome by a deep sadness and despair. 

One of the very best antidotes to feeling sorry for myself has been helping others, if only in a small way. We all need to be needed, don’t we?

{“So, what’s with the sheep?”}

A few weeks ago our friend Jane, from the neighbouring parish of St John’s Darlinghurst, phoned to ask if Team Di (Di B and myself) could help her out.

She was organising a Messy Christmas community outreach for St John’s, and urgently needed knitters to make enough sheep to be placed in shops and businesses in the streets around the church for ten days leading up to  Christmas.

Here’s how their church described the Messy Church Christmas Trail…

The Messy Church Christmas Trail
As you know we are starting our Messy Church
Service next year. To introduce this to the community
we are going to have a Messy Christmas Service
on Christmas Eve and to encourage people
along to that we are going to have a Messy Christmas
Sheep Trail. The idea is that we knit sheep,
(that's right knit!) and offer them to businesses that
we have contact with on Victoria Street. They are allowed to name them and
we then have forms and local families can go to each business and find the
sheep and its name and fill it out. There will be prizes and each form will have
the Christmas story and details of our services on it.

No problem, we said, and with a little help from Di’s mother Margaret and our friend Helen in no time we had seven fat sheep!

They didn’t have to be perfect (thanks, Jane), in fact “quirky” was the word she used. We happen to specialise in “quirky”, and I think our seven sheep certainly are individuals!

 

At the end of the time the sheep are to be rounded up and taken back to St John’s for a children’s Christmas celebration!

They might have quite a few tales to tell by then.

I have lots to share with you here in the next week, but now it’s time I dived back into that paperwork. Bottoms up!

Di

I just couldn’t stop myself…

Have I told you I love the custom iPhone 4 case I created through Quilt My Phone? {Oh, maybe once or twice…!}

Not content with just one, I also ordered a case for Di B’s brand new iPhone 5 through the same store. Di’s been such a stalwart this year keeping St  Mark’s Quilters on track when I’ve been MIA, and this vintage Roman Stripe Quilt Pattern from Cathleen’s in stock range seemed an appropriate way to say “Thank You”.

Would you like a “quilted” phone case for yourself?

My exciting news is that I’ve taken my Daisy a Day quilt photo, tweaked the saturation just a tad to compensate for the production process, and created case designs for eight different cell phones. You can now order one for yourself (or a friend for Christmas) from my new Zazzle store, QuiltMe.

You can even create a customised case there too, using your own photo.

Even better, you’ll get 40% off today! Just use the code 12DAILYDEAL3.

Offer is available until 11.59pm Pacific time (6.59pm Australian Eastern Daylight Saving Time).

Di