Finished: Good Neighbors

For two years now, I have participated in Bonnie Hunter’s mystery quilt. Here’s Celtic Sherbet, the one I made for the 2013 Winter mystery. And this is Good Neighbors, the one I made for the 2014 Winter Mystery.

I don’t have a lot of pictures of it in process, for some reason. But I did manage to get fence photos of the front and the back.

And a few of if during the quilting process.

And of course I have one of Friday modeling on it the night I finished piecing the top.

When I was working on it last December, I was pinning sections together and noticed flashing lights outside. Ambulances, police, firetrucks, and lots of neighbors going into and out of the house across the street. The father in that house had had a heart attack and was found hours later by his son, and the mom was out of town at a sales meeting. I called her and spoke to her and went across to see their son, who was surrounded by friends and family and civil servants. Their older son was on the way home from his first semester in college, just before he would have been taking his final exams.

Every time I worked on the quilt after that, I thought of their family, and the events of that night and how everything changed for them. Prayers were said as I worked, and it became their quilt. When I finished it, I gave it to Christy. She was not expecting it and didn’t know about it, so it was extra special to give it to her. She’s the neighbor who acted as our agent the night of the fire, who went into our home with the fire inspector and let me speak to him on her phone, since we were out of town. While neither of us is particularly social, we are always friendly and greet each other when we happen to see each other outside.

Good neighbors are truly a gift. I’m glad I was able to give her a quilt that had so many prayers sewn into it.