This quilt, “Sunburnt Fragments” , shown here at the entry to my 2005 solo echibition in Washington DC, found a new home recently when it was auctioned in aid of The Royal Flying Doctor Service and the West Australian Breast Cancer Foundation at the Patching By The Port.    This triennial regional quilters retreat/symposium is held in Esperance Western Australia in support of RFDS,  and this year the additional cause.  For some reason I had not been told or just didn’t realise the fundraising aspect of the symposium, but once  I did,  I was happy to provide this quilt for auction at the final dinner, and delighted to see the reserve price exceeded slightly.  The new owner, Lynne Beros, runs one of the two fabric shops in the town, and I’m sure the quilt will be able to be seen and enjoyed by regulars and visitors to her shop at least from time to time.

On a wet day in Fremantle earlier this week,  this head gear really caught my eye as I crossed the road to a bookshop, its wearer entering just ahead of me.  I couldn’t resist asking Jeremy, as he turned out to be, to allow me to take a pic as he prepared to go on his way.  He has several, apparently – slip on covers that go over his cycle helmet.   He was such a good sport about a zany request from a strange woman, but  as he was in a hurry I didn’t have time to ask him who makes them – perhaps Perth-ites have seen them around and know where to get them.  I thought it wonderful that a guy would wear something so, well, eye catching.  And that’s the whole point, of course !

So continuing with the clean out upstairs I found the poster I mentioned in yesterday’s blog ! I think I was able to order or wander into the PO and buy it, can’t remember now, but at least I was able to have this even if we were not able to be in Aus that year and missed it all.

The top 3 rows are the letters – they had to be a certain minimum height within the proscribed area.  A huge variety of techniques were used by the different groups.  The lower 3 rows are the pictures/scenes/designs that related to the regions.   So, 0ur ‘H’  is 3rd in from the left on the 3rd row down, then the nugget on the diamond is bottom row, 3rd in from the right.  Seen as coming and leaving.  Several people have written to me offering pictures, related and unrelated information – thanks to all who’ve responded.  I’ll act on some of the advice.

With some difficulty I moved aside some furniture to access my book case yesterday and thanks to my orderly filing system instantly found the  March 1998, first ever  issue of Down Under Quilts Magazine.  The centrefold was an article on a quilt produced as a community project in the Eatern Goldfields of Western Australia.

It was part of a nation-wide project in which regional fiber crafts people all round the coutry were asked to band together to produce these double sided quilted banners to form a huge sign welcoming visitors to the travelling bicentenary exhibition that travelled all round the country in the year of of the bicentenary of white settlement of Australia, 1988.  One one side was the assigned letter – ours was H, and on the other was to be  a design that reflected something important about the region/town/city from which it came.  So, The Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia, semi desert and a very rich gold mining area since the discovery there in 1893 provided the theme and the colours chosen for our quilt.  It was all coordinated by my good friend Margery Goodall (who’s now here in Perth and now a prominent Aus contemporary quilt maker)  The crazy patchwork blocks making the letter provided hundreds of people in the area the opportunity to sew a bock or embroider a few, or many, stitches as their contribution, and then it was all assembled according to the detailed instructions provided by the whatever-depatment it was that orgnanised the whole thing from Canberra.  When fully assembled on this structure at the entry to the exhibiiton read Australian Bicentenary Exhibition 1988 or something like that, and as visitors left looking at the other sides of these quilts, those provided a fantastic array of the diversity of environments and life of our country.  I don’t know where these are now stored, and haven’t heard of them since the show was demounted at the end of the year, but hope they are in some national archive somewhere – makes mental note to inquire, and would love to hear from anyone who has information on this.

So – the centrefold of the magazine shows yours truly, October 1987, in front of the soft sculpture of my design and creation,  modelled on a very famous huge gold nugget found near Kal, known as  “The Golden Eagle”.  The background of the nugget is red earth colour on which I free machine embroidered lots of trees and landscape features including a statue of the discoverer of gold there, Patrick ‘Paddy’ Hannan, and top and bottom some more  fme against the red, also.   And all this before I had any connection with quiltmaking!  Imagine my delight when my friend Gloria Curry, who took these pics and submitted them.  She sent me a copy of this brand new magazine to which I immediately subscribed, which ever since has served Australian piecers and quilters, traditional and innovative.

Well, not mine, sorry – I mean, don’t be greedy! there’s one just before this post, that will keep you going a while.  I’ll put it in the Ebb&Flow gallery on my website shortly.  No, someone else’s new work: on one of the lists I subscribe to someone recently announced she had put up new work on her blog or somewhere – as happens daily.   If I have a mo. I pop in to the link, often backing straight out again too – it doesn’t take up a lot of time mostly, and as in this case, I left no comment.   What came to mind immediately was  ‘Oh, so you recently studied with Nancy Crow then?’  truly – several of her hallmarks were blatantly incorporated but not nearly so well done as Nancy’s works.  But, worse, the several quilts featured are to go in a book that this maker is co-authoring with someone .  This  person clearly paid a lot of attention in Nancy’s workshop, or perhaps it was in one of her acolytes’, but instead of  internalising and absorbing what she now knows into something that will emerge later in some fresh individual way after being processed for a while, she is just regurgitating it AND perpetuating it in book form, asap.

This is one of my beefs with the state of the ‘art’ in contemporary art quilts today.  The books and workshops/courses that sell – and everyone wants to make money, fine – they are so heavily weighted towards what the the artquilter wants – classes on technique-de-jour rather than design; magazines and books containing masses of projects with how-to-do-one-just-like-this recipes instead what many still really need – of inspiring photos of works and interviews with artists just devoid of technical explanations about how the stuff you’re admiring is actually made.  So many quiltmakers and indeed the organisations that represent them are caught in this bandwagon, it all gives the false illusion that all you have to do to become an artist is attend workshops with the hottest teacher names, and enough of them, and, bingo! an artist is born and fledged all in one movement.  Sigh.  I think I’ll go off and make some new work while I listen to the footy.