I had a lovely evening this Monday. I went to visit one of the closest quilt groups we have in the area – the Material Girls in Bury St. Edmunds. Bury is still my most favourite town in Suffolk and the name of the group just got me!

The guest on the night was Susie Yates introducing to us St. Felix Frolic. Susie works as an Art and Textile teacher at the Saint Felix School in Southwold. She was reading the Tracy Chevalier book ‘The Last Runaway’ in which group of women come together to create a quilt as a special gift for someone, usually as a wedding present – and this quilt made by many different women with many different sewing skills and abilities is called frolic. And that is exactly what she decided to do – she encouraged a group of people to get together to create a quilt and was given permission to use a room at St Felix School without charge – hence the name the ‘St Felix Frolic’. More people began joining the group and it was soon decided to create a community quilt of Southwold as part of the first ‘Southwold Arts Festival’

The group grew into a size of 24 ladies with Susie, and each of them made couple of blocks describing High Street, with it’s hotels, shops, buildings. You can also find a Southwold Pier, Lighthouse, beach huts and many more memorable places. The size is about a 2,5m x 2,5m (100″ x 100″)

The whole piece has been quilted by Daisy May Quilting – Suffolk’s very popular place for long arm quilting. Funnily enough, if I remember well, I think I had a visit by Valerie and John of Daisy May in our shop back on the Isle of Wight and we had a lovely “quilting” chat.

Anyway the whole quilt is a piece of art and a great inspiration, that’s for sure and will be soon hang at local surgery for anybody to come and admire it. By the sound of Susie’s talk it seems ladies had a wonderful time making  this beauty and are quite keen to make  something else in the future, so we might see some more one day.

The ladies of Material Girls were all very welcoming and friendly and I’m very looking forward visiting more of their meetings in the future.

Thank you for reading

Vendulka