In the days after the terrible shock of the events in Christchurch on March 15, 2019, ‘Angels in Gumboots’, a New Zealand quilter, put out a call for green heart blocks to be made into quilts for the families of the victims and for the injured. The colours green and white were chosen as white is the colour of mourning and green represents paradise. The blocks could be pieced or appliquéd.

I’m not sure why this tragedy hit home so hard to me but as I sewed, I thought of three reasons: firstly, I’m a New Zealander and I’m with everyone who felt that things like that don’t happen here, secondly I’m teacher in Australia, and this terrorist, this angry violent young man was one of our students, just a kid like any other; thirdly I really feel the impact on these innocent people just gong about their business. I’m tired of these acts being propounded s some kind of conflict between Christianity and Islam. It so isn’t. To my mind it is a conflict between good and evil: between violent hate filled people and innocent people of faith. The terror acts in Sri Lanka have now occurred to devastating loss of life with an escalation of violence. How much better the quilters’ response: friends who are Christian, who are Muslim, and those who have no religious conviction have all banded together to create something to build unity and healing.

I ended up writing my own pattern for the heart blocks. ‘Angels in gumboots’ had suggested a pattern which is on their facebook page, but I wanted a heart that was rounder in shape. As some friends wanted to make hearts too, I wrote the instructions up for them. For one friend, this was her first attempt at patchwork and mastering the art of the quarter inch seam. In the end I received hearts from Malaysia, from Queensland and from friends locally. I also received offers of financial help and fabric from work colleagues. This was a wonderful help and it felt good to be making a cooperative effort, with good people banding together.

I decided I wanted to add words into the quilting and I wanted them to represent the unity of the people and the way everyone came together in response to this tragedy, so I chose to write them in English, in Mãori, and in Arabic. The four words I chose were Peace. Love, Strength and Family. ‘Kia Kaha’ means ‘be strong’ and you may have seen this written in messages from New Zealand at the time. I thought of writing ‘unity’ instead of ‘family’, but i think ‘family’ more gives the sense of how people are feeling. In a family, we all look after each other and we accept our differences. It says more than ‘unity’. I have friend who speks Arabic and she gave me the words in Arabic (not what you know, it’s who you know). She also did some helpful trouble shooting when I hadn’t realised the software had scrambled the letters!. Not to self, always get someone who knows to proof read.

I then decided I wanted the text to fit into a heart shape (because I like things to be more complicated than they need to be). Now, I am a total beginner at the adobe suite but thank goodness for helpful people who post tutorials. I found out what I wanted to do is called ‘warping’ text and after a lot of trial and error I succeeded. (Yay!).

warped text being transferred to paper for quilting: Aroha = love

Then I quilted the shapes into the white blocks of the quilt. I liked the subtle look, not obtrusive but still there. If you would like the warped text templates and my sewing instructions, then please feel free to download here.

My goal was three quilts but I received enough blocks to make 6 (thanks Sue, Miranda, Lyn, Zarina, Liyana, and Bec) so here they are.

Making these quilts has helped me to work through how I felt about such a terrible tragedy happening so close to home and I really hope we will grow towards a more compassionate, more accepting world.

Healing Hearts for Christchurch