First, start a blog....
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| So begins the epic kitchen reno...bring on that BBQ! |
January 2011 marked the beginnings of
this, my OTS blog…now a big 4 years… and my early efforts to shape an unruly quilt list
into an on-line album! It also heralded
yet another Australia Day Exhibition (2011) so the midnight oil was burning to
have MORE quilts to hang. Well, we
couldn’t hang too many of the same ones could we?
And the best result...more finished quilts. Yahooee!!
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| Visitors came to help us celebrate Australia Day 2011 |
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| We had lots to look at and talk about! |
We also celebrated that year with a couple of
shopping trips; one in the metro area and one to the Blue Mountains. Great days if not a tad long but a few little
extras to add to the “cut-and-come-again” stash! (Anyone who has read Norman Lindsay’s “The Magic Pudding” (1819), a famous Australian children's book will understand what I mean.)
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| Ribbons & Rainbows at Blackheath - now sadly closed |
Finally time came to start something new – a chance to
celebrate after being such a goodie two-shoes - so I began to make up a couple
of “Travel Stories” with those bits & pieces I had collected during my
travels. I was in part inspired by an
article I had read in Quilters Newsletter Magazine (June 2003, issue #353) some
years ago by the esteemed Helen Kelley.
In the article, she describes the quilted postcards she had made
to celebrate her travels. “Hmmm, nice
idea I thought” but picture quilts weren’t exactly my cup of tea, so I let the
idea percolate for a while. It wasn’t
until later that I realised “Bush Picnic” with those lovely Aboriginal
fabrics I’d been collecting was a kind of homage to my Perth, WA trip (2002). Inspiration at last! So began some serious work and I polished off two
more small quilts fairly quickly and also started to play with something a bit flashy; a
rather nice collection of purples & acid greens from The Purple Patch. (This must have meant I visited the store
before it closed down, but memory escapes me when that was exactly.)
