Saturday 21 June 2014

A Bunch of Co-Incidences

About a week ago, I got a text from my daughter which went something like this:

"I am at Vinnies at Kincumber and found this.  Isn't it one of your group's quilts?"

The text was accompanied by these photos.

 



It is definitely one of our labels and I certainly remembered that quilt!  So the following morning I went up to the St Vincent de Paul op shop to find the quilt.  It was there alright.  And it was one of the quilts I had made!  It was obviously unused, and obviously had never been washed.  (No.  Not dirty - just that a quilter can tell fabric which has not been washed.)

The blocks had been donated by someone and had languished in the cupboard in Cabarita for ages, so one day I picked them up and brought them home.  There was one block short to make up the quilt so I drafted out the pattern and made the extra block.  Then I sashed it, pieced the top, and quilted it too.  I even have a small piece of the binding I used on this quilt, still in my box of binding off cuts.

Here is the quilt....


So I bought it.  It went back to Cabarita on Thursday and it will be reallocated and donated somewhere else.

After a bit of deliberation, we decided that it must have been one of the quilts we gave to St Mary's Nursing home in one of our "top up" batches in 2011.  Why?  Because that design of the label was created in 2011; Jan doesn't remember the quilt and she started with us in 2012; St Mary's is a Catholic establishment, and St Vincent de Paul is a Catholic charity.  We think that the quilt went to someone who died fairly soon after receiving it, and either the family gave the quilt to the charity, or there was no family and the nursing home passed the quilt to the charity.

But what a bizarre co-incidence!  The quilt was made by me; it went to Cabarita, where it was distributed; it found it's way to St Vincent de Paul, and would have gone to the central distribution area in Sydney;  it was sorted there and sent to the shop in Kincumber, the next village to the one I live in (how many other op shops does this charity run??); and lastly, my daughter happened to be in the shop and spied it!

So that is the story of co-incidences.

3 comments:

  1. I think it is more like Devine Intervention - it needed you to 're-find' it to have it gifted on as it was meant to be. Hopefully the next home will give it extended care and love.

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  2. What an interesting story. I think it's nice that you get to donate the same quilt twice :)

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  3. Gosh this provenance needs to accompany the quilt surely!
    Wouldnt it be lovely if they always were returned to the maker in these instances so that they could be reoffered to hug another in its life!

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