By Ards Peninsula Craft Group
How We First Got Involved
We are a small group and a new one so we were finding our feet when lockdown hit us and our committee was re-launching our u3a. The craft group made a small panel showing some of the towns and places around the Peninsula to go on tour with them as they did this. This coincided with the 40th anniversary quilt block competition and we thought we would ‘give it a shot’ as we had very little meeting time left to get everything together before the closing date.
The Meaning and Design of Our Square
Our square has the understanding of friendship at its core. Friendship invites you into a group whether you are single, a couple; disabled or even have a four-legged friend as your guide. As a new u3a, we are ‘finding our feet’ too and with the help of signposts (which generally is a chat with another u3a member), people can be guided to the groups that are up and running. If you are active, be it mentally or physically then it keeps you going. That is the positive.
When choosing the design of our quilt square, I gave the group a selection of blocks to choose from and the ‘Hands of Friendship’ square won. Our county colours of North Down are used in the block and the colour layout was a group decision. Our Ards Peninsula is silhouetted in the centre. We wanted to include the different groups that were up and running at the time and thought about movement in the block (as we have tides along most of the coastline) – signposts and footprints gave that direction.
Being a member of different groups, you want to consider those whom you have met along the way and include them whenever possible. So it was that the footsteps in blue and red would indicate male and female, dog prints was hoped to illustrate that assistance people could also join and we used straight lines with partial shoes to indicate wheelchair users. This reflects that the u3a is open to all and that the hands of friendship extend to everyone.
Our Making Process
In the making of this block, we used English paper piecing. Some of the ladies had no experience of patchwork and this was also a new technique for others. Using English paper piecing meant more of the group could be involved in the project as it was all hand-sewing. Material was sewn on to paper shapes, those shapes sewn to each other and made into mini-blocks; then each mini-block made into rows. Rows were attached to each other to make a block. To make the final sizing, the red border was added.
The signposts had to be written in permanent fabric ink, sealed then sewn on after the block was pieced. Then the footprints were added, the stitching of ‘Ards Pen’ was completed and finally the peninsula silhouette was cut, pressed and ironed into position with indicators showing the main towns of the area.
We are all extremely proud and humbled that our efforts have been included in this anniversary quilt.
What's Coming Up For Us
Another way that the Ards Peninsula u3a is celebrating the 40th anniversary is by planting a commemorative tree. As a craft group we will be thinking of those who are going to suffer from ‘fuel poverty’ in the next cold season and are creating knitted or crochet squares to be made into blankets.
See all the winning quilt squares for the 40th Anniversary Quilt in our blog post.
