I have been saving the cardboard templates from a hexagon patchwork I found in the recycling factory (as seen in one of my first posts). I have become very attached to these wonky hexagon templates. My favourite has a child’s writing with ‘patchwork’ written over and over as is if in a spelling test.

The recycling factory is a busy working environment, I have to carefully undertake my rummaging around the sorters. Huge piles of textiles are gathered on tables for the sorters to look through and separate out in to categories such as; t-shirts, bedding and bras. The section that I always look in, is household. Here I often find tablecloths, napkins, haberdashery bits, off cuts of fabrics, (some from unfinished projects) and sample books of interior design fabrics.

When I say I found this patchwork, it was literally thrown at me, durin the sorting process, whilst I was searching through the household textile container. So I have always felt it was destined for me. I also always felt a sadness that a patchwork, full of dedicated hand stitches, could find its way to a recycling factory. Why was the piece never finished? What happened to the maker? The templates inside give evidence of a family. Why has it not been saved and cherished by anyone close to the maker?

I knew as soon as I got the patchwork home that I wanted to grow it in to my own patchwork quilt for my bed. As I have been working on adding to the patchwork, I have been thinking about the hand stitches from the previous maker. Some are roughly sewn and are now falling apart, others have been tightly sewn using blanket stitch. The blanket stitched hexagons appear on the outer edges of the patchwork. Perhaps the maker was conscious of trying to improve their earlier stitches.

And so a project is evolving, in dedication to Odette, who I believe to be the maker of the patchwork. I begin making hexagons, each one made using my favourite template from the original piece, and start to hand sew the pieces together.