Welcome to the Ākuhata/August Newsletter! 

Hello from Athenree, Waihi Beach. My name is Sheryl Madigan and I am the AQ Committee person responsible for the Members Challenge.

I grew up surrounded by sewers, knitters, crocheters and rug makers. Grandma was still making her clothes by hand when I was young. My first sewing experience was making a skirt, all by hand, in Standard 4 with Miss Halls. My teenage years involved buying half a metre of ‘material’ from Pollock and Milnes in Hamilton on a Friday night to make into a new mini skirt to wear out on Saturday. I distinctly remember discovering a small leaflet on patchwork in a craft shop in the ‘70s resulting in some hexagon cushions from dressmaking fabrics.

Through Playcentre, I met Gwen Wanigasekera who took me to my first Waikato Patchworkers’ and Quilters’ meeting in Cambridge around 1987. Waikato P’s and Q’s were a big part of the next ten years of my quilting journey with involvement in Calling All Quilts, QUENK (Quilt Encounters of the Northern Kind) and the 1997 Symposium and I was a founding member of NANZQ. I worked on the sub-committee that organised the NANZQ exhibitions in conjunction with the Craft Show in Hamilton for several years. During that time I was known as Sheryl Nagels.

Life hit a speed bump in the early 2000s and quilting took a back seat with a house to renovate and an increased focus on my career in Education. However, during this time I continued to attend Symposia and collect fabric! Having always thought I would like to live closer to the sea, I retired to Athenree in 2020. My local group is Beach Quilters at Waihi Beach and I am so enjoying the time I now have to walk on the beach and rediscover the pleasure of quilt making. My daughter is also a seamstress and quilter, my two grandsons love to snuggle under a quilt, so those family traditions continue.