Christina here. When I was a teenager, I had an American friend who used to work on patchwork quilts with her mother and two sisters as a group project every so often. It made the work go faster, and was also a lovely way for them to spend time together. I remember thinking I would love to try it sometime, but then I forgot about it. Quilting wasn’t a handicraft that was practised much in Sweden when I grew up, or at least I’d never seen it done, so I didn’t have a chance to learn how. (Plus I don’t have any sisters.) But I had heard of them – over there they are called lapptäcke.
Later, when I moved to the UK, I saw quilts for sale in Laura Ashley shops. I couldn’t afford them myself, but my mother bought one which she later handed on to me when she no longer wanted it. In the meantime, I tried making one myself by sewing squares together on a sewing machine, but it wasn’t as nice and I didn’t like it much. It didn’t feel authentic either, since it hadn’t been hand sewn. To me, the charm of a patchwork quilt is all the work that has gone into it, each piece of material perhaps a memory of the garment it had come from and lovingly stitched.