A Wedding Patchwork Quilt

Between 1995 and 1998 I went to the University of Wales in Lampeter. I loved the place from the first moment I got there. Lampeter is a small town in mid mid Wales ... there is no train station, very few buses, hardly any shops and 45 minutes to the nearest towns (Carmarthen to the south and Aberystwyth to the north). I met Mr Plum here!

In between studying and indie nights at the union bar, I was also a member of lots of different societies ... and met lots of very interesting people. I have lost touch with most of them - but with the advent of Facebook (I don't have my own profile but hijack Mr Plum's!) I have got back in touch with some of those I had lost touch with.

One of those friends is getting married next Beltane (a pagan handfasting on 1st May 2011) and started up a group on Facebook called the Wedding Patchwork Quilt. While she had been researching traditional wedding customs, she was drawn to the idea of a Wedding Quilt. Possibly originally an American idea from the time of the Pioneers, it involves a community of women coming together to create a patchwork quilt for the engaged couple. She really liked the idea of people getting together, sharing time, skills, stories, scraps and creating a beautiful object in the process. She invited us to join in with her own (almost virtual) community and be involved in her project to create a ‘Wedding Quilt’. As she still lives in Wales, I have made a patch for her and will be popping it in the post. I hope that she likes it!

One of the stipulations was that we design the patch with the couple in mind and that we enclose a description with the patch detailing why we have made it that way so that she will be able to remember who sent each square.

Here is a picture of the quilt so far (shamelessly pinched from Facebook!)

Here is the patch I have made ....

It didn't photograph very well, but I have depicted a hill which sits behind Lampeter and is called "Magic Mountain" by the students. Some said that it was called this because of a convergence of ley lines on the hill ... others said that it was because of the mushrooms which grew on it. I never went up the hill as I was too scared of being shot by the farmer. Mr Plum says that he went up there though! Unfortunately I don't have any digital pictures of Magic Mountain so can't show you what the hill actually looks like.

I hope that the happy couple will like it!