Lynne's quilt - celebrating 25 years of vegan living and our friendship

My Blogger's Quilt Festival entry, an attic window quilt that celebrates 25 years of vegan living. You can see more photos of it on Flickr.

While I was making the quilt, Lynne was diagnosed with breast cancer, which turned out to be a secondary to a stronger and nastier one in her lower spine and the quilt took on greater significance to both of us, this virulent cancer caused her death, and I am so grateful that I was able to visit her before she died and also that she was able to wrap herself in my quilt as she slowly declined. It went to the hospice with her and the last I heard of it was that it was being exhibited in Scotland by her local friends to promote vegan and animal rights, but sadly I've lost touch with it now.

Lynne Mitchell was a wonderfully strong woman whose life and friendship was extremely influential in my life and to celebrate her 25 years of vegan living I created her a quilt that tried to commemorate her actions and activities over the years. Lynne was a woman who acted on her beliefs and she fought long and hard to get fox hunting declared illegal in Scotland and fought against animal cruelty and promoted their rights to live free of harm from humans. She was also proud that Scotland finally regained its independence from England and had its own parliament and was able to see the new Scottish celtic renaissance.

We met when I lived in England in the '80's and we both influenced each others lives and when I returned to Australia we kept our friendship alive by daily emails and two return visits by me to Scotland. Each attic window in the quilt represents some element of her life, the pink cancer ribbon, the rainbow flag, animals living free from harm, letters to the editor and parliamentarians about fox hunting, logos of the clubs and organisations she belonged to, images of mountains and wilderness as she was a great walker and climber of munros in the Scottish highlands and there are also pictures of her family, friends and beloved cats. The colours of blue and yellow where chosen to match the new colour scheme in her bedroom.

I designed and pieced the quilt and it was quilted by a commercial quilter.