a suffolk summer quilt

We're just back from our summer holidays; this year, a month spent in Suffolk (on the east coast of England) with my family.

With the warmest English weather I can ever remember, we spent as many days as would could at the seaside, and then returned home to lay down blankets and sit in the garden together, looking out over the most amazing iridescent yellow fields. Something I've missed terribly since moving to Texas is a summer spent outside, and so the sea air and the evening breezes that swept up over the Waveney Valley gave me the deep, clear breaths I'd been missing.






We picked up a few souvenirs from this trip -- a handful of carefully chosen beach stones, two handmade mugs from my favourite gallery in Southwold, a few bars of Cadbury's -- but perhaps most meaningfully, my Mum and I worked together on a couple of quilt tops inspired by the local summer colours.

The mustard yellow fields. The chilly grey-and-navy sea. The pale warm sand. The bright pops of beach huts along the shore.

And what a lovely reminder it is proving to be. I'm still quilting it at the moment, but I've loved wrapping it around my shoulders even now -- loose ends, safety pins and all -- while looking through photos from the trip.




More than other other quilt, this one is infused with a sense of calm and well-being; the feeling of rest, of being home and really known. Something unexplainable that comes, perhaps, from the sharing of fabrics and time and this period of life spent together.