A letter from a reader

At 64, I had sat through twelve years of show-and-tell without ever having one thing to show

The only thing of mine that has ever been printed is three lines in the church newsletter asking whoever borrowed the good tea urn to please bring it back, and it never did come back. So I am no writer, and what another woman chooses to carry about with her has always been her own business as far as I am concerned.

But three different women asked me about a bag at a patchwork weekend in Beechworth last weekend, and I have now explained it so many times, between the scones and the Sunday pack-up, that it seemed easier to write it down once, properly.

I should say first that I do not sew. I can take up a hem if pushed, and Lyn would tell you even that is generous. Graham’s sister Lyn is the quilter. She is 71 and has been at it for forty years, and every October her patchwork group takes over a little country hall in Beechworth, up in the north-east of Victoria, for a long weekend of sewing, gossip and more slices than is strictly sensible. Twelve years ago one of her ladies dropped out, Lyn asked me to fill the room at the guesthouse, and I have been going ever since as the help. I do the urn. I butter the sandwiches. And on the Saturday night, when every woman in that hall stands up for show-and-tell and holds up what she has made that year, I sit in the back row holding the teapot.

My things went up in an old navy footy bag of Graham’s with one handle mended in electrical tape and a smell of liniment that no amount of airing would shift. This year Lyn came to collect me, saw it sitting by the front door, and said it.

Di, you are not bringing Graham’s old footy bag into a room full of quilters.

She said it kindly, the way Lyn says most things. But I stood there in the hallway and had a proper look at it, and then at the rest of what I carry about with me, and it was all the same. Graham’s old bag. The shopping trolley my mother left me. A beach umbrella from a petrol station. Not one thing anybody would look at twice, and not one thing I had actually chosen.

I did not set out to become the woman in the back row with the teapot. Nobody does. It happens quietly, one sensible hand-me-down at a time, until one day your sister-in-law looks at your luggage and says out loud what you had been politely not noticing for years.

How it happens

When I was nineteen I had a floppy hat with a daisy pinned to it, and a cheesecloth top I wore until it fell apart. I liked things that made me smile. I am quite sure of that.

What changed was not me. It was everything that came after. A household happens, and money goes on the children and the car and the hot water system, and anything that is only for you starts to feel like an indulgence. You use what is there. Graham’s bag was there, so I used it, for about twenty years.

And when you do finally go into a shop, there is nothing waiting for you. Go and look at the luggage in any department store. Black, navy, charcoal and a brown they call tan. Built for airports and business trips, every one of them designed so that nobody will notice it. Which is fine if you are going to a conference. It is a strange thing to carry to a weekend that is supposed to be a treat.

So you stop expecting to want anything. You take the bag that is there, and nobody says a word about it, which is rather the point.

What I had wrong

Here is the part I had most wrong, and I suspect I am not the only one.

I thought I was simply not a colourful person any more. The cheerful things, I told myself, were for the makers in that hall, the women with the talent, or for my granddaughter, who is nine and wears glitter to the supermarket. Not for a retired receptionist from Epping who does the urn.

It was never that I had grown out of liking nice things. It was that I had stopped giving myself permission to own something for no better reason than that it made me smile. The day I gave myself that permission, the whole back row feeling went with it. I did not believe that either, until it happened in front of a hall full of quilters.

The bag is called the Daisyvana

It is from Thompson Sydney, a small Australian boutique that has been quietly making lovely things for women our age for a few years now. I found it the same week Lyn said her piece, on the theory that if I was going to replace Graham’s bag, I would replace it with something nobody could mistake for Graham’s.

The Daisyvana is a quilted weekend bag in the shape of a little camper van. I do mean that. The roof is sunshine yellow, and down the sides run stripes of orange, pink, purple, blue and teal, with white daisies scattered all over them and a big golden peace sign on the side. The front of it is the van’s face, with green windscreen windows and a padded white bumper, and it sits on quilted wheels. Two quilted handles go over the top, in a mix of colours like a sunset. Every bit of it is stitched.

I put it in my basket twice and took it out twice, on the grounds that a woman of 64 has no business with a peace sign. Then I thought about the back row and the teapot, and I paid for it. Graham looked at it, looked at me, and said he would not be seen carrying it, which I have decided to take as a promise.

It is roomier than it looks. A weekend of clothes, a cardigan, my good shoes and a wash bag went in without any clever folding, and everything is easy to get at once you are there. It sits up neatly on the floor beside a chair instead of slumping over, and the handles are comfortable even when it is full. That is really all there is to it. It is not complicated. It is just a bag somebody thought about.

What happened at show-and-tell

I put it down beside my chair at the end of the trestle table on the Friday afternoon, and I had not got the urn going before it started.

The woman at the next table, a retired teacher from Wodonga with a thimble on a chain, asked where it was from, and then picked it up by the handles to feel the weight of it. The lady who has taken over the urn on Sundays asked whether they did one in green. And then there was Beryl.

Beryl has run show-and-tell for twenty-two years. She once called a quilt that had won a ribbon at the Albury show adequate, to the woman who made it, in front of everybody. On the Saturday evening she came down the hall, picked my bag up off the floor without asking, turned it round in the light and ran her finger along the stitching round one of the daisies for what felt like a full minute. Then she said, somebody has thought about every one of those daisies.

Then she passed it down the row. And when the show-and-tell came round, she looked at the back of the hall and said, Dianne, you are up. I said I had not made it. Beryl said, you chose it. That counts.

So for the first time in twelve years I stood up at show-and-tell and held something up, and a room full of women who know exactly what good stitching looks like gave it a round of applause. Lyn did not say anything at all. She just poured me a cup of tea, which in twelve years has always been my job.

Three things I have learned since

One. Get the size for the weekends you want. The 40 centimetre one does an overnight, the gym or a sleepover at the grandkids’. The 46 centimetre one takes a couple of outfits, shoes and a towel for two or three days away. The boutique say most women end up happier with the bigger one. Mine is the bigger one, and for once I agree with somebody’s sales advice.

Two. People want to touch it. Every woman in that hall picked it up. So did the young man at the guesthouse, and so did my granddaughter, who has asked if she can have it one day. I told her to get in the queue. A bag that strangers want to hold is a very different thing to carry from one they step round.

Three. You do not need a reason. I spent twelve years thinking I had to make something, or earn something, before I was allowed to bring anything worth looking at into that hall. It turns out you are allowed to just choose something because it makes you smile, and carry it in like you meant it.

About the price

I want to be straightforward about this, because it was the thing that made me hesitate.

The Daisyvana is $76.95 in the 40 centimetre size, and $79.95 for the bigger 46. It was $154.00 and $160.00.

My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because anything with this much stitching in it is usually priced for somebody with a very different superannuation balance to mine. There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no department store taking a cut in the middle, and they run a spring sale to move the season’s stock along.

I did what I imagine you are doing now and went and read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars. Not the suspiciously perfect five you see on some websites, which if I am honest made me trust it rather more. One woman in Myrtleford had written, “Took it to my sewing group and nobody could keep their hands off it. It holds a full weekend away and it makes me smile every time I pick it up.” Given where I had just been, that one made me laugh.

Since then I have ordered Lyn one of the other designs for her birthday. She says it is for carrying her fabric. She has not put a single piece of fabric in it.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sat out the back with a pot of tea and you asked me, this is what I would say.

Have a look at what you carry about with you, and ask yourself honestly how much of it you chose. If the answer is very little, and most of it came from your husband, your mother or the bottom of a cupboard, then it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and look at this funny little bag. Not because a bag will change your life. It will not. But I had been sitting in the back row for a long time without noticing I had put myself there, and it was a bag covered in daisies that got me to stand up.

Two practical things. The spring sale is on now and the first summer stock is already going, so if one of the designs catches your eye, that is the one to have. And listen to the boutique about the bigger size.

Twelve years in the back row at show-and-tell. This year they passed my bag around.

Dianne