The SAQA online silent auction has almost ended week 1.   Results have been marvellous, and the few quilts remaining at the close of this phase today at 1-59pm will then be available for the next couple of months through the SAQA online bookshop/store. 

Buying one of these small works is a good way to begin an art quilt collection, and some collectors come back and buy a piece every year.  It’s one only work per artist, so I hope someone reeeeeally wants mine, making my contribution worth as much as posssible. … buy today and it go for $750 which would be marvellous…. The  group of quilts containing my work   “Timetracks 12”   (page 2b, scroll down to row 10/14)   begins today at 2pm Eastern USA time.

Studio Art Quilts Associates activities focus on raising the profile of this art medium with galleries and the art collecting public through curated exhibitions of all kinds, in the US and internationally, when possible with catalogues; and regular publications of members’ work in book and digital form.   Members are scattered around the world, and Aussie members have been well represented in SAQA exhibitions.    

Follow this link to see every one of this year’s 234 small works pictured, and an outline of how the auction is conducted.  http://www.saqa.com/hotnews.aspx?id=190   I hope you will find something there to your  taste, and if not already a collector,  perhaps you’ll begin your collection today!

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.