Journal Notes

Seven years ago I began a Celtic appliqué quilt, thinking only of colour and curve and the quiet pleasure of handwork. I could not have known that the stitches would become markers of time; like when the world closed its doors with COVID, and not long after, my husband, Tom, was told he had colon cancer. The quilt lay folded some days, and on others it rested across my knees in hospital rooms and long evenings at home, thread pulling through fabric while chemotherapy pulled at him. Twenty-seven months of appointments, hope, fear, courage. After he was gone, I picked it up again with different hands — slower, heavier, learning how to live as one instead of two. Every knot, turning, and stitch carries those years within it: the waiting, the loving, the losing, the enduring. What began as a pattern of Celtic Knots has become something truer — a record of a marriage, a pandemic, a goodbye, and the quiet strength it took to keep stitching. This quilt won Best in Show at the Northumberland annual quilt show, August 2026 and Best in Show at the Pictou Colchester annual exhibition, September 2026.