Dear John,

Tomorrow I'm going to hop on a train at the crack of dawn

and come and visit you.

To say that I am excited, would be an understatement.

Now I'm actually much better at writing

than I am at explaining things,

so here I am writing the things I want to say.

I brought your book almost by accident.

I was buying some textbooks on Amazon and it came up in the feed.

I knew who you were of course (everybody does),

and I thought I just buy the book, basically because I could.

At the time I was studying full time

and waiting for the end of the year to get my hip replaced.

It was pretty hard going.

When I got your book, I was inspired by Glacier Bay

and I made three blocks that night and turned it into a quilt top.

I really liked the way you wrote the patterns,

with clear instructions and a straight forward method.

I made another one, and another one.

As the weeks went by and life got even harder,

getting up at 6am and sewing for an hour became the thing that kept me going.

It was something to think about those nights when I could not sleep,

it was something to do when I could not walk.

I got lots of positive feed back from Instagram

and that all kept me going too.

Making all the quilts was one of the things that transformed my life
(getting my degree was the other one).

I realised that #icandohardthings and that gave me the courage

to do a whole bunch more hard things!

Words fail me to explain how much your friendship and support have meant

over the last year or so. Thank you for not laughing at my craziness.

Thank you for being such an inspiration. See you tomorrow!

deb xox