Joyce’s Quilting Quandary

Week 44! Where do those weeks go! This week I have been sewing. My son asked me to make a dress for one of his friends, Jacqui,  who has joined the Divas choir. She was a little perplexed when she discovered  that their dresses were all made of the same purple fabric so they had to organise the making of them. So, it was Joyce to the rescue. In honour of my sewing I decided to include some tools in my block. If I am sewing , then I really want my tools to work well.  It is very frustrating to have a pair of scissors which don’t cut precisely and easily.  In honour of good scissors they feature in the block. I have also included  the purple thread in honor of Jacqui’s dress and the red in the corner is the pin-cushion. I used my favourite fabric for the foreground,  a Nancy Wolff design for Robert Kaufman ” FUN!damentals” . I find that it has a great tonal value for this quilt, not too dark, not too light, just right! The scissors, needle and thread and the pins are free machine embroidered in black. The numbers are done in the same way with the addition of some diagonal stitching in a grey variegated thread. The quilting is done in cream and light grey variegated thread.

We had a dust storm this week. The wind on Wednesday the wind was terrible, gusting up to 110kph. This was due to the remnants of a cyclone travelling across from Western Australia.  Due to the drought, any strong wind contains huge amounts of red dust and grit. As a result , all the cars and windows are now covered with numerous red splodges. There was a lot of damage due to tress coming down. Some people were without power for five days!  In the block I used the weather maps, some of the photos of damage and an article about the origins of the storm with red and brown organza to represent the wind blowing.

Busty ( Whoops, I think I mean busy! ) week this week as usual. Drove to Port Fairy, near  Warnambool to see an old friend who is not very well. This is a two hour drive from Ballarat, across the Western District to the coast. The farmers in this area have planted many wind breaks which provide stock with a shelter from the westerly winds and also can be harvested for timber. For me, they are visually wonderful, with long straight trunks and pom-poms of leaves on the top. I was annoyed that I had not taken the camera with me to capture the light and shade. I have used the trunks in the design, plus a cut end. On Friday night I went to a concert by John Williamson, who sings True Blue and A Home Amongst the Gum Trees amongst others. My favourite song  which he sings is Shelter written by Eric Bogle.  He is a wonderful musician and sings from the heart. It was an interesting crowd, much different to the usual Ballarat theatre crowd.

Week 11 is about the lunch at the Gallery and the black clothing exhibition, Black in Fashion. So far I have only seen 1/2 the exhibition because it is on the two sites of the gallery.

The lunch was great! JENNY BANNISTER MUST HAVE BEEN BORN IN AROUND 1953 in Redcliffs. When she was 16 she wanted to go to the school social in a black velvet A-line Twiggy dress with organdie collar and cuffs, her mother wouldn’t let her wear black so she wore brown instead, but she wanted black!! She acquired a black bias cut crepe -de-chine petticoat from Auntie Hilda and a black velvet smoking jacket ( she still uses the petticoat block which only has a seam down the back) In 1972 she went to Emily McPherson College to study pattern making and production design. I think she spent a lot of time pushing the rules !!! She went to the Emily Mc ball in a 1930’s halter-neck dress from the op shop. It had moth holes all over it so she sewed a metallic sequin over each hole. She won bell of the ball! and still produces dresses like it! One night in the Wye River Hotel she was dressed in her usual black and someone asked her if she was a cockroach!!!! Spent 12 years selling clothes on consignment, bank rolling herself. Eventually found someone to pay her for making them and in 1997 opened the first Jenny Bannister boutique.

She considers that black clothing is slimming, incognito and low maintanence. Someone at the lunch asked her to describe her outfit. She said it was called ” Primeval Macho Slag” She had her crepe de chine slip under a cut out leather shift with studding. ( She said that anyone who came to her for work experience spent their time studding garments) She had black tights and Dutch platform soled shoes. Her hair was held back with a wide black scarf and she had huge hoop earrings and the black sunnies perched on top. Her jewellery was a huge black chain made of neo-prene. She was good fun !!!! After the lunch I had a quick look at the Zandra Rhodes exhibition at RMIT.

I was not happy with this block because it was so BLACK. The subtlty which I was aiming for turned into solid black. So I put some hand stitching on on grey around the dress and the 11, also added some glitter on the dress itself. I am much happier with  the effect, not quite so black.

This is the first week of the journal quilt. It was extremely hot this week, so have included the sun as the motif to convey the heat. The aprons represent some that I designed and made to be sold at the Organs of the Ballarat Goldfields Festival. The sun is fabric applique with machine embroidery and the aprons are hand appliqued.