Farewell Shirley

A couple of weeks ago, six of us had the sad task of attending the funeral of our lovely friend Shirley.

 

Shirley was one of the original Stitching Hearts members, with her close friend Rema, Darleen & Jill.  They met at a class in the local patchwork shop, Purple Patch, which is sadly no longer, and decided to continue with the friendship by setting up our group.

 

Shirley was very involved in all the group activities, whether it was in working bees at Darleen's

 

Shirley, Cheryl & Dasha

or quietly hand stitching in the hall at our meetings

Shirley & Rema

 or sorting quilts for distribution

Shirley & Cheryl

 or at handovers

Darleen, Shirley, Dale (President, Rotary Club of Drummoyne), Dasha.
 Jill & Pat

 or just another sewing day with her pals

 

Sally, Jill, Colleen, Dasha, Darleen, Cheryl, Shirley & Lyn

 

or at functions such as the Rotary Club of Drummoyne's 2008 Art Show

 



Jill, Shirley Dasha & Darleen

Shirley was a prolific quilter and made many, many quilts for Stitching Hearts.  Sadly, we can't remember all of them, but those with long memories tell me this is one which Shirley made for Grosvenor House in 2007

 

 

She also had fun making kids throws for the children at Lucas Gardens Special School in 2010

 

and then attended the handover of the quilts at a special morning tea

Shirley, Colleen & Rema

This is one I personally remember.  It came in partially completed, all scrunched up and terribly dirty with stains across the applique, which was also very dodgy and coming away in several places.  Shirley, with her incredible patience, fixed all the applique, cleaned it (she said she washed it numerous times to remove the stain) and then completed the quilt. 

 

 

Outside of Stitching Hearts, Shirley was a member of the Quilter's Guild of NSW for many years, and was Membership Secretary for much of the time.  She worked tirelessly for that organisation and helped in the background at the annual Quilt Show the Guild holds each year in Darling Harbour.

 

Shirley loved to hand piece and was a major contributor to the collaborative, hand pieced hexagon quilt that Stitching Hearts made in 2006 for the Catholic Women's League for their annual conference in South Australia.  The quilt was raffled at the Conference Dinner and raised over $8,000.

 

 

Shirley's technical skills were recognised in 2010 when her quilt, "A Tribute to Violet" gained her first prize in the Amateur Traditional category at the NSW Quilter's Guild Show.  A well deserved accolade.

 

Shirley suffered with ill health for the last few years, and was finally put to rest on 20 July 2014.

 

Vale Shirley.  We will miss your beautiful nature and your lovely smile.

Art in the Park back in October 2012

Going through some old photos, Darleen passed some on to me.  So that is a good excuse to tell you about this great event in which we participated.

Art in the Park was promoted by Canada Bay Council, and occurred in October 2012.  It was held in Cabarita Park, which fronts onto the beautiful Parramatta River.  There is a ferry wharf at the end of the park.  Here is the River Cat which plies the river between Circular Quay (in Sydney) and Parramatta, coming into the wharf.

 

It was a glorious evening, although very windy.  We set up a table opposite the entrance to the Olympic sized pool which opens out to the water, and strung our quilts along the railings.

 

We had quite a few people come past and admire the handiwork.  Here are a few of the quilts we displayed that day.  (The photos were taken in our hall as we selected the quilts to display).  Unfortunately the camera used for these photos left a blurry mark on most of them. 

 

This was Jan's first contribution to the group.  Isn't it divine?

 

 

 

And there is a story to go with this next one.  During the afternoon the attendants working at the pool came out to look at our display.  One of the Lifesavers was here on a working holiday from Denmark (I think).  He fell in love with our quilts and came out 3 or 4 times to look at them.  We had a little confab, and decided to gift one to him to take home.  He literally skipped with glee when we told him, and chose this one.

 

We asked if he wouldn't prefer a more masculine one, and his answer was No, he didn't want a stereotyped male quilt, he wanted something different.  Well his English wasn't quite up to that sentence, but we got the gist of it with lots of hand waving and gesticulations.  So this mauve one went to him.

Here we all are.

 

During the afternoon we all took turns to wander around the Park to see what was going on.  These guys were amazing.

 

These two ladies were doing whacky yarn bombing knitting.  You were encouraged to sit down and have a go at that loom you can see there, on which they were weaving with plastic bags.

 

And this lady was wearing all sorts of "recyclable rubbish".

Besides these, there was face painting for kids, the Rotary Sausage Sizzle, a huge raffle for a new car, displays of indigenous dance, a display by the Historical Society, and a series of concerts.  There was heaps to keep you occupied.

June Meeting

We met again last week, and boy did Darleen give us some updates!  She had been gathering data to include in the submission to Council for a grant, and here are the statistics.

In the last 12 months we have distributed the following:

Minamurra Presbyterian Nursing Home, Drummoyne                 84

St Mary's Nursing Home, Burwood (top up)                                 12

MS Society, Lidcombe (8 singles & 10 comforts)                         18

Drummoyne Meals on Wheels                                                     44

Westmead Hospital Babies with Cancer                                      30
                                                                        
                                                                                Total:           188

Not bad for a small band of 10 or so, don't you think?
             
Besides these, we also donated quilts to the following organisations for raffles/auctions as fund raisers:

St Patrick's Church, Mortlake, Parish Dinner
Concord Community Hostel, Rhodes
Barnwell Park Golf Club (charity day for Lucas Gardens Special School)

Now to show you some lovelies, but first I have to tell you this story.  In January there was a devastating fire in the Blue Mountains and over 120 homes were destroyed.  One of these belonged to Ellen's daughter, whose family lost everything except what they were standing up in.  Their eldest was to sit the Higher School Certificate (final exams in High School) the following week.  Ellen was at one of our meeting when she heard the news. 

We decided to make the family some quilts.  We chose this one which has sat in the cupboard waiting for a home for some months, for Ellen's daughter & her husband:

 

It is absolutely stunning, with fabulous workmanship.  I feel terrible that I can't credit the maker, but it has been in the cupboard for ages, and we may never have know who it was anyway.  So good to see it go to someone who needs it. 

 

This lovely little Twinkler Star inside a Twisted Star is fabulous, and just look at those points!  Every single one meets perfectly.

 

I should know the name of this star, but I don't.  So if you do, please tell me.

Evelyn made this one for Ellen's grand son.  See the street art faces?

 

And Robyn made this one for Ellen's grand daughter:

 

All three need to be quilted before they go to their new home.

 

The next two quilts were blocks donated to our group by one of Evelyn's friends, Ann Tosich.  Evelyn sewed the blocks into tops.

 

 

 

Cheryl made this bright & cheerful quilt featuring balloons.

 

 

Evelyn and Robyn do a lot for Aussie Heroes.  The last sewing day, Jan-Maree gave our group a bunch of blocks which had been made as block of the month blocks, but were not suitable.  They are all too "girly" and you can't send girly quilts to big boofy blokes, now can you?  So we scored.  Evelyn constructed this pretty top from some of the blocks:

 

And these are the left overs.

 

At least 3 quilts in that pile.  During the day, we stacked them into groups, and several ladies took them home to be made up into tops.  You will see that next time.

 

Lastly, Evelyn brought a doona cover she has made for herself for show and tell.

 

Darleen showed us two very special things.  First up was this gorgeous Thank You from one of the students of Chalmers Road Special School.   Here he is in his wheelchair with his quilt (face and name fuzzed for privacy).

And second, back here I told you about Betty, a tireless fund raiser, to whom we gave one of our quilts.  Well, Betty received an OAM during the Queens Birthday Awards in June.  Here is a clip from the local paper:

Congratulations Betty from all of us.

That's it for now.           

May Meeting

I have done it again.  Here is a post I wrote a month ago and does not appear to be incomplete, which I have found in the "drafts" box.  Apologies.  This time I will actually post it!  Enjoy.....

 

We met mid May, but life has been so busy for me this last couple of weeks that here it is the end of May before I have had time to write this.

 

These lovely cheerful quilt tops were made by Cheryl

 

 

This one was made by Jill a few weeks back, and Maria quilted it.

 

Made by Jackie, quilted by Maria.

 

Another one made by Cheryl

 

Jan made the next three quilt tops.

 

This one started out with an appliqued basket on a piece of plain cream fabric.  Jan took this home, added some lovely flowers to the basket, and lots and lots of half square triangles for borders, to make it a gorgeous quilt.

 

We decided to donate this quilt to Jeanette O'Hara who is organising the upcoming Senior Citizens' lunch at the club as a door prize.

 

Lovely scrappy "man" quilt.

 

And one with flowers appliqued to the centre of the 4 patches.

 

Made by Jill, quilted by Dasha

 

 

The next two were made by Jan a few weeks ago, but this week they came in quilted by Robin.

 

The next two photos are of baby wraps made by Jill.  They will end up at Westmead Hospital for the nursery there.

 

And lastly, these two were made by Jill.  They are not part of Stitching Hearts, but she brought them in to show us.  One is for Community Cat Care, the other is for Animal Liberation and both will be used as raffle quilts by the organisations.

 

We selected 5 single bed quilts to be donated to a new residential centre being built by the Greek Orthodox diocese for disabled adults at Gladesville. 

 

I am getting better at recording who made what.  I come armed with both writing pad and camera, but I still have to shriek "Stop, wait!  Who made that?" at least 5 times a day.   The others are getting used to me running around like a mad thing taking photos of everything!   They have even been known to turn around and say "Have you got that Dash?"

 

Its a 5 week month so the next meeting is not until the first week in June.

 

PS.  Have you noticed our logo I put up on the right side bar?  The logo goes onto the label sewn onto each and every quilt which is made by our group.