In memory of Kerry

Two years ago at the beginning of spring, when I’d unpicked the little quilt to transform it into new life by becoming the Glenbrook Lagoon, I visited my textile artist friend in the hospice for palliative care. After surviving myeloma, Kerry had developed a malignant brain tumour that had been surgically removed. I’m now thinking that this "lagoon" quilt – little though it is might represent the strength, love and community caring threads that Kerry had woven into and throughout her life’s journey. Our connection had come about through our shared love of the arts, especially creations in fabrics, and we shared many values and visions. This resurrected quilt is for Kerry.

When I visited Kerry in the hospital’s palliative care unit I did not expect what I saw, nor to experience what I felt. She was lying completely still with her eyes closed under a beautiful, bold, bright pink quilt covered with naive floral motifs hand-stitched all over - a quilt of her own making in collaboration with a long-term fellow quilter, she was passive, speech clearly unavailable to her. Only the regrowth of her shaven head and swollen face showed above the blankets. Though I’ve been told that hearing is the last faculty to leave, I wondered if she could hear me because there was no sign of recognition - until on leaving she opened her eyes and her lips moved slightly. Nevertheless, I pressed on with my partly prepared thoughts about what I might say. It takes me very close to the bone to see Kerry this way.

Gently stroking her hair and face, as my father had done when I was a confused teenager, crying myself to sleep, I said how delighted I was that our paths had crossed through our shared love of textile art and gardens. Kerry had twice helped me out on the final finishing touches with her free-machined details, one for a commission for a close friend and one of my own UFOs, which had lain dormant for many years since its inception. It was an important quilt for me to finish as I struggled with all the physical side effects from the immunotherapy treatment, and the emotional dramas of dealing with living with metastatic melanoma. Somewhat ironically it had begun as a ‘still life’, a vase of exuberant flowers, gleaned from a wide selection of fabrics in my stash by “fussy cutting” (- a term I recently learned, meaning to cut around shapes within a piece of fabric to transfer them for use in another work). 

The various blooms had been arranged into the vase on a chequered tablecloth, with some hand stitching into the stamens of the lilies. But it was Kerry’s meticulous attention to the separate petals and hearts of the flowers that brought it to life, each flower given detail through her skilful free-machining embroidery, bringing them forward into a low relief. The naming of the wall hanging became “Resilience” – partly because it had waited so long to be finished, and of course to echo my own physical and emotional state in the process of learning to live with Stage IV melanoma cancer. As I read recently, it's like the seeds of a dandelion being blown off to take root elsewhere.

The making of the "Resilience" quilt is in 2016 archive