Springwood Winmalee Bushfire Quilts [1]

Last weekend was our first St Mark's Quilters monthly workshop for the year, and guess which half of Team Di had flown away to Africa leaving the other one to do all the work. Never mind, the ladies were in capable hands with Di B in charge. 

I thought I might just share with you a selection of the quilts we made for the children of families affected by these devastating Blue Mountains fires late last year. 

Springwood Winmalee Bushfire Quilt Appeal

For the best part of a week last October bush fires threatened the townships of the Blue Mountains, advancing along ridges and surging through gorges, damaging property and bushland, killing wildlife and destroying nearly 200 homes in the Springwood and Winmalee area. 

To give you some idea of the magnitude of the fires, here are some photos I took on the afternoon of Thursday 17th. They show Sydney Harbour, its water turned to a deep charcoal reflecting the angry blanket of smoke that had settled over Sydney from the bush fires burning more than 80km away.

If this was how Sydney looked, I can't begin to imagine how terrifying it was for the residents and fire fighters. A friend who was driving back to Sydney through the smoke and chaos phoned to update us and said it was truly frightening.

Di B and I drove up to Winmalee last Wednesday, where we finally met Tracey Greenaway, co-ordinator of the Springwood Salvation Army Quilters, to deliver our quilts from St Mark's Quilters,  and hear her dramatic version of events.

As we drove around the area we saw plenty of reminders of the fires' devastation. The ground is still bare, but the blackened trunks are sprouting bright new leaves and the bush is starting to regenerate.

This is a typical sight, a gate to a vacant block of land where a burnt-out home has been demolished and cleared and the front driveway now leads nowhere.

On the previous Sunday we displayed the 30 quilts made by our group at the back of the church, hanging them from the gallery and around the font.

Typically, I was still stitching the binding down on my fourth quilt for Winmalee at the last minute, but I made it just in time. This Double Square block proved a simple but effective one for our scrappy quilts.

Tracey hopes to have 600 quilts by March, when there will be a grand exhibition on Friday 21st and Saturday 22nd. Our delivery brought the total number of quilts to 545.

Then the families from the local community will be given the opportunity to choose their quilts, hopefully finding comfort in knowing that so many quilters all over Australia have wanted to help in just a small way.

Smiles all round!

 For the fourth time in as many years the congregation at St Mark's, Darling Point, will find the church decked out in quilts this coming Sunday. I hope they bring their sunglasses!

Made by St Mark's Quilters, this batch of cheery quilt-love is bound for Springwood in the Blue Mountains where 193 houses were destroyed by catastrophic bush fires in October last year.

Since Linda Hungerford kick-started our quilting group with her exciting Stitchin' Mission in 2009 we've had an ongoing commitment to -

* Making a quilt for every boy or girl who enrols at the KU Marcia Burgess Autism Specific Early Learning and Care Centre (aka The Marcia) at Liverpool

and

* Making Blankets of Love, mini quilts, for the grieving parents of bubs at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital at Camperdown who sadly don't survive childbirth, or who spend time in the Newborn Intensive Care Unit because of serious health problems following birth.

However, from time to time, when emergencies crop up, and organisations put out a call for quilts as part of providing comfort to folk suffering as a result of natural disasters, we also like to help.

We've sent quilts to the victims of the January 2011 floods in Brisbane, the February 2011 Christchurch New Zealand earthquake, and last January's bush fires in Dunalley Tasmania.

So when Tracey Greenaway, co-ordinator of the Springwood Salvation Army Quilters, let it be known that she had a dream to have 500 quilts by March 2014 to be able to give every child in this hard hit community a quilt of his or her own, we joined in - as did a huge number of my quilting friends across Australia.

I just thought I'd share with you three quilts I've made or finished off for Springwood. After Sunday's Hanging of the Quilts you'll see what everyone else has made. It'll be worth the wait.

I pulled out a couple of quilt tops that had been waiting for their moment in the sun, and with some simple machine quilting and bindings they were ready to shine. Don't tell Linda, but I think this "Stairway to Heaven" quilt was the quilt top she and her granddaughter Celina made when they visited one of our Saturday workshops a couple of years ago. It was good to see it finished at last!

Here's another orphan quilt top I finished off, a "Noah's Ark" design.

Someone donated this backing fabric several years ago and it's my very favourite. Turning over the corner of a quilt and seeing these sunny, smiling faces just has to be the happiest surprise!

You've seen this rail fence quilt before. I made it last year when I was trying to use up some of my scraps.  Ha! Silly me. Of course they just multiplied.

 Though it was destined, at the time, for The Marcia, we like to keep a few quilts in reserve and I've decided this one will go to Springwood instead.

This quilt is all about blocks of colour rather than the individual fabric prints. For a "free" quilt I was very happy with the result.

But it wasn't until I looked closely at each of these three quilts when I was taking photographs today that I realised each one has oodles of smiles! Some are more obvious than others, but just look...

I really hope and pray they will bring a smile to their recipients, whoever they may be.

Comfort and Joy

Christmas Day might be 6 weeks away, but today St Mark’s Quilters held our final workshop for the year and celebrated our 4th year of quiltmaking together with a break-up Christmas lunch in the garden.

We began the year making quilts for the folk of Dunalley in Tasmania who had lost their homes in the January bushfires, then went on, over the following months, to make dozens of Blankets of Love for Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and child-sized quilts for “The Marcia” kindy for autistic children at Liverpool.

Sadly we’ve ended the year once again working on quilts for victims of disastrous bushfires, this time closer to home in Winmalee in the Blue Mountains. That’s the harsh reality of summer here in Australia. And the season has hardly begun.

As soon as Di B and I read Tracey’s appeal to quilters for assistance in giving every school aged child a quilt, as well as an extra quilt for every household, we knew we wanted to get on board to make her vision a reality in the new year.

We emailed our quilters the instructions for a very simple double square block and asked them to raid their stashes, if they wanted to help, and bring along as many completed blocks as they could today. These were to be the building blocks for our quilts for Winmalee.

Those girls are wonderful. They brought along more than a hundred blocks!

After a day of crawling on the floor to arrange and rearrange blocks into child-sized and adult-sized quilts, we have around 8 finished quilt tops – and rather a lot of homework to do quilting them!

The blocks were numbered with masking tape and stacked together in order, making it possible for many hands to work together stitching them into quilts.

We have quilts in reserve (we like to keep some for emergencies), so along with these we’re confident we’ll be able to make a decent contribution to this heartwarming effort by the wider quilting community.

Lunch in the garden was a fun affair, with delicious food contributed by everyone.

Once again we thanked God for giving us a passion for creating quilts, a gift we all love using to give comfort to people in need of encouragement and hope.

There were paper hats (no photos!) and Christmas earrings.

And the usual show and tell.

Another Blanket of Love by Margaret

And these colourful kiddies’ quilts…

Barb

 

Gail

 

Di C

 

Michaela

 

Moo

 

Gillian

 

Michaela

Michelle worked on the binding of a beautiful quilt she’s made for the newborn  daughter of an Iranian refugee couple in her church.

1930s fabrics, large quilting stitches and knots give this quilt real vintage charm, and I know it’s going to be treasured.

Gillian has finally finished a real labour of love, two storybook quilts for her granddaughters.

I could suggest you play “spot the differences” and there are quite a few, but both are enchanting, with sparkle and quirkiness, and all the traditional elements of a fairytale – a king and queen (complete with golden crowns), a handsome prince and a frog who might be a prince in disguise, a beautiful princess, a rather friendly looking dragon, and a snow white unicorn.

Finally, if you’ve made it this far I’ll leave you with a little bit of silliness, a collage of some of the bags people brought today. They just made me smile

Di