The Seedling Quilts - Elderberry Quilt

The word "Elder" comes from the Anglo-Saxon word for "kindle" or "fire," because the hollow branches made for excellent firewood. Interestingly though, because of the rich healing properties of the berries, magical myths grew up around the Elder tree, and burning it became a dangerous invitation for bad luck. 

Hippocrates, the Ancient Greek Father of Medicine, described elderberry as his "medicine chest" because of its effective use against colds and other infections.

In Medieval Europe, elderberries protected homes from lightning, helped identify witches, and copious amounts of berries kept on the window sill distracted vampires, who would stop to count them rather than enter! 

People who’ve followed me for a while know that I’ve always struggled with my longing for creative expression. I grew up believing that creative careers were set aside for those who started piano lessons at 4 years old or who had parents driving them around to auditions and rehearsals. As a teenager I set aside any ambitions I had for theatre or singing and focused my attention on saving the world. If I only had one life, I should make a difference, I thought. I told myself that time spent drawing or writing poetry alone in my room wasn’t going to achieve it.

I wish I could have articulated these assumptions to friends or mentors at the time, so that they could have questioned me on them. But, they were pretty settled and cloudy in my mind. It wasn’t until I had kids that my energy for working with people shrank to almost nothing, and my need to create grew loud and angry. 

I wrestled with this long and hard. How could I sew away happily at home while there were orphans in Russia (orphans I had visited, not just metaphorical ones) without toilet paper or families in Australia without homes or regular work? Overwhelmed, my response was often to just keep sewing and leave the third world crisis to be figured out another day. So, slowly, over about 8 years, I began to see that my feeble efforts to save the world were not really helping anyone, and were making me miserable. What if I took the risk and pursued what I longed for and just saw what happened?

This change in direction has, by no means, been the magic answer. Moving house and changing jobs is hard, making new friends is hard, running a business HARD. I’m not suddenly happy because I pursued my passions. But, I also don’t think happy is the point. I made choices that were mine and that were important to me. Choices where I could own the sacrifices and the consequences. That’s incredibly meaningful to me. 

For the last couple of years, I’ve been listening to Jordan Peterson’s psychology lectures at the University of Toronto. In his series on personality, he said this:

Man, that hit me hard! I often feel flabbergasted that I was made this way. Why not more organised? Why not tougher? Why not more practical and less head-in-the-clouds? But, burning out it my religous work, and having signed a book contract that was hanging over my head while we moved interstate, made me rethink my posture. If I was going to achieve anything with my one life, I needed to work with my skills and weaknesses. I needed to co-operate with myself. I needed to cut myself some slack, but also work hard at something I actually could work hard at.

So, when I was researching my medicinal herbs, Elderberry felt like the perfect fit for this quilt. It was a spark. An idea that brought joy and productivity and healing and meaning. A quilt for beauty and for fun in a season when I felt burned to the ground, and was hoping for new growth.

Elderberry Quilt is the seventh quilt pattern in my book, The Seedling Quilts. It's a collection of quilts for that gave space for artistic expression after a difficult burnout. Click below to have the free Elderberry quilt printable templates delivered straight to your inbox, and let it spark your creativity again.