Last night I went to an evening organised to enable WAFTA (WA fibre textile artists) people to meet and listen to a couple of visiting UK weavers and their unusual looms. The interesting shapes the loom configurations enable have some potential – but, not being a weaver, I can comment not much further than that! and from my point of view it was even more interesting to meet with so many WA textile people I hadn’t seen for ages, who had all brought along something for display during the evening. I had something very recent to take along too; there was some great stuff on show. Jenny Abbott’s lovely dresses particularly caught my attention – she’s got a large repertoire of techniques, and, with the toned down more subtle colour schemes, it was great to see how her work is maturing. Today I will be meeting with Margery Goodall and Marjorie Coleman, Wendy Lugg , Cherry Johnston and Marion McGee, possibly the hard core of Perth’s contemproary quiltmakers, and will see more of Margery’s recent work than the few lovely pieces she had on display last night. I too have held back a couple more things to show just them…. then after that the hectic schedule switches to resumption of house maintenance issues, and the visiting the friends and rels schedule in the evening. I have gathered up all the quilts I came to gather ( these have just returned home from touring foreign parts, without me, in various collections) I have bought the usual several metres of my fav. batting, a couple of meters of fabric, and that case is almost packed…. still a book shop visit to do, and a grocery visit to scoop up some vegemite, curry paste and a couple of other essentials, which I will leave to the last minute rather than keep going back, as Mike tends to add just one more thing to the list just after I have shopped … but I’m already mindful that this time next week I will be in Tas and almost ready to head to Sydney for a day (The Expressive Stitch exhibition, Fairfield Galleries) before flying out on saturday 9th to head back to Montevideo…. sigh, time flies.

One of the things I have done since arriving back in Perth is scoop up a few quilts that I had either left here, or which had returned here after being exhibited somewhere else – and these are two I haven’t seen in ages. Both will be going with me to my solo exhibition in DC in June. I have at least two other fire quilts, one very small the other rather large, which will be an interesting group. The other quilt, Mirage, is an early one in the series I now call Ebb and Flow , but perhaps it bears more connection really to “Lightstream”, which you can see in full on my website, gallery page 6 I think … anyway towards the end there. go to www.alisonschwabe.com where you will also find full information about the exhibition itself.
I don’t know what time the blogger site is set to – I suspect it’s Joe’s my florida webmaster’s, …that explains some of the odd times that are appearing at the bottom of my posts.