Gordon Amery, organist at Gillingham Methodist Church, has recently completed an 18,000 piece jigsaw in aid of church funds. “I’ve always enjoyed doing jigsaws, especially at Christmas when it’s a real pleasure to do a 1,000 piece jigsaw with the time to complete it. However, I wasn’t prepared for the surprise when I was given a gift of an 18,000 piece jigsaw entitled ‘At the Watering Hole’. I didn’t know such big jigsaws even existed! How did I start? A big relief was to find that the jigsaw was in four sections, each of 4,500 pieces, since doing a complete 18,000 piece all in one go would have been too daunting. Each section took about 6 weeks with a break before starting the next section (to stay sane) and the whole project took around 9 months to complete.
The Methodist Church kindly allowed me to use its space to join the four sections together, making a finished jigsaw of 3m x 2m. Church members came to the ‘unveiling’ (with coffee and cake!) and we raised £33 for church funds.
Gordon says he now has his eye on a 32,000 piece puzzle…watch this space!