Memories of my Feelings of Place Exhibition in Port Moresby.

I have just put a link in the side bar to my Feelings of Place Exhibition, hung earlier this year in Port Moresby. It was a wonderful experience for me, very busy over the four days meeting people through workshops I held, family and the exhibition event and sales. There have been other photos in older posts but I thought I'd just post a couple more here too. My sister and her family have just been in Maleny visiting for my birthday. They left yesterday and we miss them!

The PNG family: Eva, Walla, Yvonne, Ellie, Thompson and Susan.

A stack of quilts for the exhibition.

At Boroko Market with the billum sellers. This is one of the places I buy my billums for my online store.(I've just got a new shipment but have not listed them yet - so come back to look if you're interested!) The little girl is Ellie, my step -niece.

Just check out the amazing variety of colour and pattern in these uniquely hand woven items of beauty and use!

Tigger the kitten, curled up on a traditional woven mat.

A folded flower in the Bird of Paradise Quilt for the workshop.

The Bird of Paradise Workshop in the lovely Ela Beach Hotel venue.

Quilt admiring staff at the hotel...

Quilts by the Port Moresby Quilt Society.Participants from villages around Port Moresby, in the hand hexagon workshop.

I was presented with a magnificent basket by the Head Lady of one of the villages. I was interested to know that many of the women make quilts and sell them in their villages.Myself, Dame Carol Kidu, Marilyn Ward and Susan at the official opening, by the Dame, of the hexagon workshop.To finish, my little niece Eva enjoying the sunset light playing on my Fire Within Quilt (Part of the exhibition).

Port Moresby Adventure

A few more potos of Port Moresby, people and places...
Below is a Billum stall at the Boroko Market. I bought some hand woven billums here to add to my online store. The variety of colours and patterns is incrdible and each design has its own name/s like traditional quilt blocks do! they are constantly adding new ones with names like "power lines", "computer".

Myself, Dame Carol Kidu who opened the Exibition and Village Workshop, Marilyn Ward and my sister, Susan poseing in front of my Pacific Stained Glass quilt commissioned by Susan last year. Dame Carol had just given a welcome speech to the partucipants at the worksop. She is a strong advocate (as is my sister ) for the rights and opportunities of Papua New Guinean women.

The entrance to the exhibition, Feelings of Place, was opened with the Bird of Paradise quilt I made for the workshop. You can see some of my quilts to the left, and some of the lovely works of the Port moresby Quilt Group to the right.

Leanne holds up her version of the quilt from the workshop. She machine appliqued a palm tree image she had worked on, after sketching and planning, instead of the Bird of Paradise, then added the borders and folded flowers from the original quilt. Very creative and effective.

Two Versions on a Theme for Papua New Guinea

Here is the finished Bird of Paradise Quilt. If you click for a close-up, you will see the stamens in the flowers. For each flower I used three gold bugle beads topped with a red seed bead so the give the impression of exotic tropical blooms.
Underneath is the top of an alternative quilt in Pacific Island fabrics I bought in Fiji. I thought it could model an alternative for beginner workshop participants . It also shows a way to use some of those full-on tropical floral prints for people who need to quilt but can't always get American patchwork fabrics.
I love to use unconventional fabrics for quilts, and discovering surprising results.
This quilt is not finished yet. I plan to make it full size with another triangle border and exotic folk art/ethnic applique on top and bottom.

I've got ONE WEEK til I get on the plane for Port Moresby and have been madly writing up workshop notes when last night my lap top's screen went blank and black! When it finally came back, the computer couldn't be turned off. I left it all night, having faith that everything would be alright...
At 5.45 AM, I crawled out of bed and came straight to the studio- it was just as I left it last night. I was looking up computer repair men when my daughter came out and pressed the Start button (something I too had done countless times to no avail), and the computer came back to life!
The terrible feeling of panic I'd had, having no back up for all my files and the deadline of next week... Huge relief now. And today I'm going to buy one of those back up data storage things.
It's frightening how reliant we are on these machines.

The Quilting is Finished

I've just finished quilting the Bird of Paradise Quilt. I decided to quilt it heavily by machine and have more photos, which I will post later, of the process. I think the bird stands out quite nicely. Now I just have to bind it and finish the flowers by hand with bead embellishments.