My Roebuck Quilt

Today I had my second lesson in a series of four, making a reproduction of the Roebuck Quilt, originally made by sisters Margaret and Lizzie Roebuck on the long sea voyage to Australia from Scotland around 1860.

I'm hand piecing it, and finding the process very enjoyable. And it's wonderfully scrappy too!

Here’s my central medallion. I did feel so pleased to have completed my homework in the month since the last lesson. I shouldn’t have been.

In my enthusiasm to finish, I had sacrificed a little accuracy and my lovely medallion was just a tad smaller than it should be. Sigh……

However, I must unpick it because being out a tad at this stage will mean a HUGE tad later. Got to get these things right. How boring reverse stitching is.

How did those ladies manage to maintain their correct dimensions without rotary cutting, templates, quarter inch rulers and such????

A birthday - and a bye bye!

The ABCs came for a stitching day today and we sat at the table in the garden under the big green umbrella, my very favourite place to entertain at this time of year.

It was the last time we’ll see Gay (in the centre of the photo above) until she returns to us in November because she flies home to England on Monday – with several new quilts in her luggage. She’s been very industrious during her 4 month stay.

This is one of Gay's creations, made with hand dyed fabrics.

We celebrated Anne’s birthday too, with a delicious gluten-free orange cake that Gail had made. Here she is getting ready to blow out her candle and make a wish. Happy Birthday, Annie!

A small grizzle from my soapbox

I need a grizzle. Sorry, gentle reader, but this is just too much.

Today I attended a 3 hour Child Protection seminar to learn the new guidelines and rules for those entrusted with caring for children and youth in our church situation. I have no argument with tightening up the rules. Too much abuse seems to have crept in under the radar over the years.

However, my problem is this. I run a crèche at our church while the Sunday morning service is on, and the children I look after are aged between 1 and 5 years – babies and toddlers mostly. We do a tiny bit of Christian-based craft, read them stories, and play with toys inside and outside. You know the kind of thing – play dough, bubble blowing etc.

I try to run a tight ship, which means in the first instance that I always have a helper, and both of us are there together at all times. Most of these are mothers or grandmothers themselves, and everyone who helps in the crèche signs a document to swear that she is not a “prohibited person” under the Child Protection laws (ie does not have a conviction for child abuse).

I keep a list of names and contact details for every little one left for us to look after, even if they are only visitors to the church and I might never see them again.

I make sure the environment is safe for them to play in, including having child-proof gates, and I regularly wash all the toys with disinfectant.

But now I’m being told such things as how long I should spend cuddling a crying baby, and not to put a toddler on my lap while we look at a picture book together. And I have been given an A4 form with so many questions that it would take a parent 15 minutes to fill in - even asking for the name of their local GP. Now why would I want to know that, if their parents are just next door on church?

These are babies I’m minding, so that their parents can relax and worship in church, and so that these little ones might learn about God’s love for them while they're young.

Sometimes they aren’t entirely happy with Mum or Dad leaving them, and so they cry for a while. They need to be held, spoken to kindly, distracted, or rocked. Rather than hold them at arm’s length we like to soothe and settle them and give them a happy experience, so that they usually greet Mum or Dad with a big smile at the end of the hour, having had a great time in crèche.

It’s indeed a sorry state of affairs when the time I am permitted to spend holding a crying toddler, and the way I’m to do that (a side-by side hug, I’m told) has to become regulated.

Stitching afternoon with Sare

Sarah and I had a stitching afternoon for Ben and Sunny's (unborn) baby today. As you can see, we made ourselves comfortable, setting ourselves up at the garden table with cold drinks, nibbles and watermelon chunks.

Sare made a start to sewing satin binding on a flannelette bunny rug, while I made some progress with hand quilting the pink baby quilt. She's convinced this bub will be a boy, so chose a predominantly blue froggy design for her rug, while I'm convinced it will be a girl. I do, however, have a baby boy's quilt in the early stages - just in case!

Stash expansion

I hadn't intended to buy anything at the Australasian Quilt Convention, but those fabric pheromones seduced me. Fortunately the new scrappy reproduction quilt I've just started needs small amounts of many different fabrics - so I have an excuse to pick up the odd fat quarter.

I was congratulating myself for only picking up half a dozen fat quarters and a bundle of charm squares - until I unpacked my bag. As you can see from the photo those pheromones deceived me again.

On the way to board my Virgin flight home I was stopped by a female inspector for a random explosives check. After I had passed the bag check as well as the wand-over-the clothing test, I smiled and quipped that I had only been to a quilt show. Oh dear, she was not amused.

By comparison, the two policemen who were peering into the hall when I arrived in the morning, and who asked me what was happening, were astonished at the eyecatching quilts displayed by stallholders and the steady stream of excited quilters passing through the doors.

"So, is this quilting popular?" one of them asked me. I educated him.

A taste of the Tentmakers' work

"Quilt Like an Egyptian"

17 months ago I was here in the 900 year old covered Tentmakers' Souk in Cairo, gobsmacked by the intricately appliqueed quilts hanging from every inch of wallspace inside the tiny shops, being introduced by Jenny Bowker (http://jennybowker.blogspot.com/) to the men whose skilful hands create these intricate designs, men she has come to call her friends, and drinking cups of soothing mint tea.

Quilt after quilt was auditioned for me, until at last I decided on this burgundy-toned one, an elaborate symphony of lotus flowers, symbolising long life, which now hangs in my dining room, halfway across the world.

Inside, though, I felt wretched. Discharged from a Cairo private hospital only the night before, after spending 3 days in intensive care for a particularly nasty case of dysentery, I struggled with queasiness, and my body felt so weak that I could only walk a short distance before needing to rest.

So when I heard that Jenny was staging an exhibition of these spectacular quilts at the Australasian Quilt Convention in Melbourne, and had brought out two of the quilters as well, I simply had to go. I just had to see them again, this time without the fog of nausea.

That is why, for the second time this week, I left the house this morning at a time when I would normally still have been well and truly in the land of Nod. I flew to Melbourne just for the day, on my own, and had a wonderful adventure!

The photo below shows Ahmed Nagib, one of only around 40 quilters who still keep this traditional craft alive. Just as he would have done back home in Cairo, he sat all day stitching and trimming his appliquee pieces as curious visitors to the AQC's "Quilt Like an Egyptian" exhibition craned forward for a closer peek at his work.

[Update: Thank you to Helen who has pointed the way for me to Pam Holland's blog. Pam has made a lively video of the AQC in general, and Ahmed in particular, and here is the link http://pamhollanddesigns.typepad.com/pam_h/files/ACQ5.m4v . You can click on the link to her blog too, on the sidebar above, and there you'll find more of Pam's videos. They really bring the experience alive!]

Hovering nearby ready to translate was his nephew, the moustachioed Ayman Ahmed, who warmly greeted me with "I remember you!". Was this mere Egyptian charm, I wondered, or are all Jenny's friends so deeply embedded in his memory? (Please don't disillusion me)

In days gone by these quilts would have been made to hang from the sides of tents on celebratory occasions or during Ramadan at the end of the day when the faithful were permitted to break their fast. Instead these days fabric printed with these patterns is rolled out by the metre for such decoration, and Egyptians no longer aspire to cover their walls with quilts from the Tentmakers' Souk.

[Update: Also from Pam Holland's always entertaining and informative blog is this link to an interesting article on the tentmakers. http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/198606/tentmakers.of.cairo.htm]

The quilts were wonderful, and on this first day of the AQC almost every one bore a red "sold" sticker, bringing their makers more income than they would generally have earnt in a whole year, as Jenny remarked in her lecture "Egypt: From the Tentmakers' Souk to the City of the Dead".