Category Archives: my patchwork

The project I finished this week started just a couple of weeks ago, when I learned that my colleague John Lie, after almost 20 years, had decided to leave Europdonor. We have been working together, performing donor searches for Dutch patients in need of a stem cell transplantation, since 1997. He taught me everything about matching, and we talked about family, and food, and the assortment of our ‘Sweets and Soup Shop’ (a little table in a corner of our office with chocolate bars, sweet treats and noodle soup and a small cup for the payments for our Europdonor colleagues), and became friends.

Since John’s roots are Chinese, I decided to make a quilt with an appliqued chinese character, meaning: See you, good bye! I have chosen for fabric from Japan, bought in the City Quilter in New York, mixed with matching fabrics from my stash.

When I was stirred up by something, John always stayed imperturbable and often said to me: ‘be careful, you have too much fire’. With this quilt I have donated him some of my fire.

John loves monkeys and is concerned about their well being, see also: Stichting Aap.

Next Monday, search will go on, but things in the Europdonor office will never be the same…

My husband Jack’s favorite animal is the penguin. As software developer, the penguin is more than an animal it is also the symbol of Linux, a computer operating system. During his business trips in the USA, he always brought me some fabric, which I really appreciated. That’s why I decided to make him a special quilt, to decorate his office.
“With love from Linux” started with cutting a number of triangles to make hexagons. I had never had done this before, but ordering the triangles was really fun, and ended in a sort of icy landscape, populated with penguins. The blue Star of David in the middle originated of it’s own accord, obviously showing my Jewish roots (according to my Mother).
I love the quilt, and every time I see it, it makes me smile.

Sunday is my radio day: I use to sit in our down stairs room, looking out over the garden, working on some patchwork project, and listening to The Sandwich: a radio breakfast.  This Sunday is a sad day: the last broadcasting The Sandwich. It will be strange to sit there and not hearing Jacques Klöters on the radio…luckily the patchwork will be there to comfort me! And there is a lot of work to do: in October we are visiting friends in Pittsburgh, who have moved into a new house; I am working on a little memory quilt. The nice thing about a memory quilt is, that it is growing while you work on it. Usually I only have a vague idea in mind, and just start somewhere. I have made a few memory quilts, one is the Europdonor quilt, made on the occasion of our organization moving into a new building. I have tried to reproduce aspects of  stem cell transplantation, the search for a donor and the international collaboration. The quilt is hanging in the hall of the Europdonor office in Leiden.

During my last visit to the US, I bought fabric to make a quilt for our new guestroom. I decided to use the twisted sister design by Ami Simms (www.amisimms.com/twistedsisters.html). Making the blocks is fun and the result is every time a surprise! After finishing the top, I used the living room floor to make the sandwich. Within seconds our cat Lotje decided the new top was a far better spot sleep on. Cats and quilts….they seem to attract each other….