Joyce’s Quilting Quandary

Fire Aftermath near Daylesford

A terrible time in Victoria !  

We have had some very bad weather days, by that I mean, extremely hot, dry and low humidity. When the days are calm, then it is not too bad! But , when a Northerly wind is forecast, then the fire danger is very real.  February 6th was announced  as one of the worst days that had ever been, and that it proved to be. The wind was blowing at over 100 kmh, and the temperature was 46.4 degrees Celsius. The bush fires absolutely devastated some of the mountain areas quite close to Melbourne, areas where the population density is quite high for a country area due to large numbers of people choosing to live in the bush. Due to the temperature and the wind, the fires moved very quickly. Some small towns, such as Marysville,  were destroyed with many people killed.    

By Sunday morning, the news was gradually coming through about the extent of the tragedgy. In Ballarat, which was a distance from most of the fires with the exception one fire at Bendigo and one at Daylesford, it was all a little surreal. We had a bit of smoke in the air, but otherwise, there was very little impact on our area. The final loss of life was 173, 100 male, 73 female. Some were children and families. 113 deaths occured in houses.    3,500 structures were destroyed.

There were some herioc stories, some tragic.

The army was called in to assist, so Michael spent several days in the fire areas.

The aftermath of the fires will be with us for years. It must NEVER happen again.

Amongst all this tragedy, I have been sewing to get ready for the trip. I have made a couple of pairs of trousers and a couple of shirts. I have been working on my Kaffe Fassett quilt, which is now complete except for sewing the hanging pocket by hand and going over the quilt to redo some of the quilting . I still love the fabrics! I will put this quilt into the Begonia Quilters  Exhibition.

Tony Delroy, Ron Radford,me and Arnie at the exhibition

A very busy week! Momi is coming to stay again with the girls from Shibuya High School. It was delightful to be able to host her again. She arrived on Wednesday.

 On Thursday morning  we had to be up very early because we were off to Canberra for the Degas exhibition! I knew that the exhibition was on at the National Gallery in Canberra. I had thought of various options to go, including driving up for a couple of days or flying up for a day. But, after some consideration I had decided that as we were going overseas , that I could not justify the cost etc. But then one afternoon on Local Radio 774 they announced a competition where you could win a trip to Canberra to see the exhibition. You had to choose one of four Degas paintings and write 100 words about it. I thought that I could have a go at it, so I did!   And I won!!!  A trip for two to Canberra, staying at the Hilton, a Cocktail party and tour of the exhibition with Tony Delroy hosting the occasion. We were then offered an extra night in Canberra and lunch with two senators, Trish Crossin from the Northern Territory and Gavin Marshall from Victoria. What to wear to the Cocktail Party was a little worrying. I eventually decided on a pink silk shirt and I made a new black silk skirt from a Sandra Betzina pattern.  I had bought the silk in Bangkok.  After organising Momi, we drove to the airport, flew to Canberra, got a taxi to the hotel – lovely- and then walked up to Parliament House. We met up with the winning couple from Darwin, Simon Elliott from the National Gallery and the two senators for lunch. 

We had a delightful lunch, went to Question Time and then walked back to the hotel. The Canberra Hilton was wonderful! Built in 1927 so that visitors had somewhere to stay, it has all been restored in the 1920’s style.  The next day we went to the War Memorial in the morning and then came back and were ready to go to the Cocktail Party at 5pm.

We met up with the other competition winners, four couples from NSW, one couple from South Australia, one from Queensland and one from Tasmania. We loaded onto the bus and went up to the Gallery. We gathered with people from the ABC and the National Gallery. Simon, who we had met at lunch, took us under his wing. Ron Radford, Director of the Gallery and Tony Delroy introduced the exhibition and then we went for a tour. It was wonderful!  Prints, drawings,  a beautiful pastel from the Mildura  Gallery and some other  great paintings. The painting that I wrote about,  ”Dancer with Bouquets ” was in pride of place with the Little Dancer. The painting was suprisingly large. Our guide was great, but it is not the way that I usually look at an exhibition, I usually like to take my time. But, it was great to be there with only 50 other people.

After our viewing, we  had a Cocktail Party in the Members’ Lounge. We had a chance to chat to Tony Delroy, which was great. Tony hosts the  Nighttime show on Local Radio across Australia from 10pm to 2am Eastern Standard TIme. From 12 Midnight he runs the 25 Question Quiz.  He told us thast he had someone phone in from the oil  fields off the coast of Scotland complaining about one of the answers. We usually listen to Tony as we are going to sleep.

After the drinks, we were then taken back to the Hilton where some of us had a little more to eat.  The next morning we flew back to Melbourne and then came back to Ballarat and picked up Momi from Rosemary’s place. The Canberra trip was wonderful. Eleanor Kirkham had done all the organising for us, so thanks to her. Momi

Well, here it it! The photographs are not perfect, but they give a reasonable impression. I will have another go at a later date! 

As always, the joining up took  a number of hours. I straightened the edges as far as possible, then added the edging strip on the right side, using the cat fabric that I had been using as spacers between the blocks.  I then joined on the red and black spotted edging strips onto the back. I cut narrow strips of wadding and slipped them into inbetween the edging strips. Then I put  lines of quilting to hold the wadding in place.  I did the sides first and then the top. I then cut the fabric for the binding and bound the edges. The fabric which I used for the binding was the wrong side of the cat fabric which I had used for the spacers. Sometimes when you look at the wrong side of a fabric it is a slightly different tone, but in this case it was an exact match!  Probably beause the cats appear to be screen printed . I chose not to quilt the spacers except a minimal amount on the edging because the blocks had been heavily quilted and I felt that this was sufficient.  I put a hanging sleeve across the top.

I will add some  comments on my reactions to the project and the process later on.

Number 54! What a journey!  I wanted the last block to include a group of the wonderful black and white fabrics which I have used throughout the year. The strips with the dividing strip represent the distance between Ballarat and Boston. The dividing strips are made from my favourite background fabric, with the top and bottom ones in a wonderful zebra print which I only have minute pieces remaining. (I would like to think that this project has reduced my stash of black and white fabrics, but I really don’t think that this is the case!) I machine embroidered our names and the years onto four of the strips. And then had a great time quilting the strips!

Now I only have to join the last six blocks onto the other 48 and put the edging on and I will be finished!!!!!

Christmas this week so I have included the Star in the East as a symbol of the hope and joy of Christmas. Imagine the three wise men using the star as their guiding light to show them the way to the birth place of Jesus. May Christmas be a starting point for a year of hope and joy for the world.  This week was also the time for Geraldine, her husband Mal and daughter Stacey to visit on their brief holiday in Melbourne from Boston. Geraldine is the other half of this diary quilt project! So after 12 months of work we had a chance to see each others block in the real rather than via the Internet. An exciting occasion for two quilters!

The background reminded me of a starry night.  The star is made of two sheer Christmas fabrics overlaid to form the centre of the star and then the rays of the star machine embroidered, with some extra details added with stranded cotton stitched by hand.  I have included a photo of the five of us taken in our front garden under the pin oak and in front of the rhodendrons. I machine embroidered the 52.

This week we went to see the musical “Wicked” with our Probus club. A group of approximately 60 people went down to Melbourne on the train, had a quick bite of lunch when we got there and then caught the tram up to the Regent Theatre. We enjoyed the musical very much! We had great seats thanks to Molly, our organiser. The very tall man in front of Loris and me even swapped seats at interval so we could see centre stage.  The set and costumes were wonderful! Wonderful colours and wonderful shapes.  Lots of asymmetrical costumes with fitted tops and layered bottoms with many frills, flounces and pleats. There was a green scene in Oz, a black and white scene and the last scene was filled with reds, russets and dark greens. The set was also wonderful with lots of clock wheels which reminded me of the Musee d’Orsay in Paris.  We had time for a wander around the city after the show, then had a quick bite of dinner and caught the train home. I have used the set as the basis of my block for this week. I have used the wonderful clock face which was the basis of the set design. I planned to use my favourite background fabric, which I did but the wrong side!  I machine embroidered the various shapes in grey and black. Then added some red and green in the bottom corners, red for the red corner and green for Oz. The background fabric was light so I overlaid it with tulle and organza and then quilted over the top

I had an all day training session at Sovereign Hill this week.  I have become a FOSH, which is a Friend of Sovereign Hill. They are a group of costumed volunteers who help make Sovereign Hill more alive by being in the cottages, the street-scape, and the diggings.  While being volunteers, they are required to have the same training as the paid members of staff. The training certainly gave plenty of information about the Park, its history, its mission and its operations. It aims to be the best outdoor history museum in the world.  The background fabric is a variation on a Japanese shell fabric. The poppet head, one of the dominating features if Sovereign Hill, is made of bias strips. The 1852 refers to the era of history that the park depicts and the 50 is for Week 50.  The quilting is done in pale grey variegated thread.

The skies in Ballarat are wonderful because we are out in the country. This week the three-day-old crescent Moon plus Venus and Jupiter formed a smiley face in the night sky at around 9pm. It is an unusual astronomical event which won’t occur for another 5 years. I used my night sky fabric for the background, a cream mottled fabric for the moon and I machine embroidered the planets. I satin stitched the moon on. The quilting followed the lines of the clouds in the background fabric.

I have been avoiding the “Economic Downturn” for weeks. Perhaps I thought that if I didn’t acknowledge it then it may go away. But as it hasn’t, it would be wrong to have a journal quilt of 2008 without doing a block about it. I think the block is self explanatory, with a question mark to symbolise the uncertainty of 2009.  I have used one of my favourite black and brown fabrics for part of the background. It has a George Eliot quote printed on it. I machine embroidered the downward trend and then trimmed the fabric back. The question mark was outlined and then filled in with grey variegated thread.  48 was covered with black tulle, outlined and then trimmed back.

I decided that I would do some assessing for the VCE Design and Technology exam. I received an e-mail about some vacancies and decided I would have a go. So I spent ten days filling in the squares on the mark sheets with a 2B pencil.  I decided that this would be the basis of my block for this week. I did the background using PrintMaster and then printed on fabric using the computer ,then added some tulle and organza for the 2B pencil blocks and enhanced them with some hand quilting.