springwood

2015 Springwood Quilt Show Raffle Prize Quilt

Earlier in the week the worst storms for 10 years, unleashed terrible damage and some loss of life on a large part of the east coast of New South Wales.Flash flooding, fallen trees, damaged houses - some washed of their foundations by the flood waters. 215,000 homes and business without power.

We were fortunate to be spared any damage to property or life. Our Emergency Services,  once again, did extraordinary work under difficult conditions. The SES (State Emergency Service) is a manned by volunteers.

The sun arrived just in time for the weekend. I made it to the Springwood Quilt Show at last and what a show it was!

Needless to say I purchased a fistful of raffle tickets and will find out at around 3.00pm today if I'm holding the winning one.

The quilts were fabulous and I even got to meet a couple of the quilters including the famous Rhonda Pearce whose Baltimore Classic won a slew of ribbons. In 2013 the quilt won first place in its class at the Houston Quilt Show .

My pictures did not do justice so here is a image from 2013.

Reproduced with the kind permission of the Appliqué Guild Australia Inc

Rhonda is so charming and talented. And patient. It took two years just to stitch the appliqué blocks. Rhonda had other quilts on display - each one just as remarkable as the others.

This was just a quilt top - but oh, what a quilt top! Her quilts are such a big size too.

Rhonda is renowned for her hexagons and her Insanity quilt is just that. My photo of this quilt was rubbish but here's one from a couple of years ago. That outer hexagon border is made up of teeny tiny hexagons!

It was terrific that you could take photos of the quilts but they were laid out pretty close together and the show was busy so taking pictures of the quilts was quite challenging.

This was my favourite quilt of the show and as I was thinking out loud about how I might be able to stuff it into my handbag and take it home, the lady standing beside me laughed.  It was her quilt!

 

The lovely Martha Krstich is on a mission to make quilts from her rather substantial stash of 5000 fabrics. Even the back was scrappy. 

Here are some of the other wonderful quilts from the show.

This is Rhonda at the show yesterday - she's quite the celebrity but a sincere and humble person who was surprised at all the fuss.

Those of us standing there admiring Rhonda's quilts agreed that even though her quilts are to be left to family members they really are museum pieces and we all hoped that future generations would have the pleasure of seeing them displayed.

It was also ANZAC Day yesterday and the 100th anniversary of the Australian and New Zealand troops landing on Turkish soil in 1915 at Gallipoli.

There were commemorative ceremonies held in Gallipoli, Villiers-Bretonneux, Canberra, at the Australian War Memorial and all the major cenotaphs around the country with record crowds in attendance.

So many young men lost - many of them from small communities and often from the same family.

Small country towns - like Springwood - have a World War I Memorial and the local community paid tribute to those who served and sacrificed in all the conflicts in which Australia has participated. Veterans and descendants of veterans marched down the main street with grateful thanks offered by the crowds.

On this day, many people wear a sprig of rosemary for remembrance and funds are raised for the Returned Servicemen's League and Legacy (an organisation established after WWI to care for war widows and their children).

Even though the Gallipoli  offensive was a defeat, it is widely considered to be the event which led to the coalescence of the Australian identity. Prior to this Australians often thought of themselves as Britons living overseas.

What a terrible price our young men paid to achieve that.