Billums

These are some of the colourful and traditional Billums available in my online store. I don't usually post about my products, but they look so good and I thought they are fantastic presents for Christmas! Since I listed them, they've been selling fast!
Billums are bags traditionally hand-woven by women in Papua New Guinea. They are made from cotton or a string like fibre. Some have fluffy cuss cuss fur woven into them, but I don't have any of those. They are woven using traditional motifs,similar to quilt blocks, with names like: streak of lightning, waves, snake. More contemporary motifs have developed reflecting cultural influences and some of the more popular bags have "computer" and "power line" designs.
Most of the billums are woven in the western highlands where the weave is denser and the billum more "solid" looking, but each region of PNG has its own unique style, colour and fibre preference.
Many billums today are made from brightly coloured, commercially produced fibres, as opposed to the natural fibres and dyes used in the past - and still popular, but harder to find.
The really special thing to me, is that billum making is another hand craft, predominantly practised by women using their creativity to make everyday objects functional, beautiful and unique. Each time a billum is sold, a woman in PNG has more money in her purse to buy food, educate her children and make more billums!
Thanks for dropping by,

Ann.

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, PNG

Finally, some photos and a post from my adventure in Port Moresby. The photos are are all a bit mixed up and contained in two posts.
I had a wonderful time and met some wonderful people in my two workshops and Quilt Exhibition, Feelings of Place. It was lovely to visit my family up there; my sister, her husband , his two girls and my new niece. the weather was clear and not too hot, and the city looked fresh after the rains. The Bird of Paradise Workshop and exhibition were held at the very comfortable Ela Beach Hotel. The workshop group was a mixture of members of the Port Moresby Quilt and Craft Groups as well as people who had been sponsored by community members and leaders. You can see the group below, all holding up there works in progress. There was a mix of hand and machine workers and everyone achieved some skills and hopefully some inspiration.

The workshop I ran for a group of Village women, proved extremely popular and instead of sitting and sewing under palm trees in a village we were all accommodated in the spacious conference rooms above a restaurant , kindly donated too us for the event. All the 35 women from various villages made their way to the venue and learnt how to hand sew quilt as you go hexagons. I provided a small kit for each participant and they all sewed away, enthusiastically planning what they would take back to their villages and how they could apply their new skills to benefit themselves and their communities. It was really inspirational for me and I felt there were many more opportunities for community development in my small way. The women are holding up their work in the photo below.

Below are some of the Bird of Paradise participants with a view of the Ela Beach venue.

I had to take this shot of a pile of the quilts I SOLD at the exhibition. They're stacked on a chair awaiting collection by their new owner. I have an empty sort of feeling, now that I've sold so many of my African quilts... but it's a good feeling too!

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.

Hello Dolly! This is just a quick catch up...

It's been so wet here with Cyclone Hamish cruising down towards the Sunshine Coast.
Our poor cats Dolly and Dusty have been spending a lot of time indoors.
Dolly looks a bit evil here, I think she was actually poking her tongue out at me!

My hat goes off to all of you out there in the world of blogging who post regularly, engage interest , continue to be creative and productive and constantly make and promote your arts and crafts...as well as have relationships with your families and run your businesses!

My Blog has suffered over the last week - I just seem to have had so much to do. Every time I sit at the computer, I skim through the blogs I follow, get side tracked into new ones and end up too tired to write as well as a bit overwhelmed by how much is already out there.

Most importantly I'm preparing for the PNG trip and Port Moresby workshops and exhibition. But I've also taught four classes here and in Brisbane, started two BOM groups in my studio (The Robyn Allen Waters "Sewing Circle" stitcheries), made the Bird of paradise Quilt and a baby quilt for my sister's new baby. Now I'm making an alternative Pacific quilt for PNG and still have a hexagon quilt I'd like to make for the workshop for village women I'll be teaching also in Port Moresby.

I went to a wonderful International Women's Day Lunch organised by Maleny Magic Patchwork and Quilts with Jenny Bowker as the guest speaker. What an engaging and inspirational presenter she is! And she generously brought suit cases full of her quilts which she explained and then let us all examine and touch. It was a very inspirational day and extremely well organised by Bev from Maleny Magic.

I've also got some new products I haven't yet put on my website, some lovely Moda pre -cuts. The Moda Bake Shop Blog is fantastic for a continuous stream of new and inspiring patterns and tutorials to use with the pre- cuts.

I have loads of new photos of workshops and student work as well as some more of my own projects in progress and finished.

Dolly's favourite spot is on the portable ironing board positioned next to my sewing machine... Do you think she could squeeze herself any smaller to fit into the only remaining sliver of space left after all my Pacific fabrics were unpacked on there?

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.

Works in Progress

I've been playing around with some of the Moda pre-cut fabric range available from my website.
First I found an illustration in Tricia Guild's book, Pattern and pulled out a collection of fabrics from my stash to go with the Arcadia Jelly Roll I decided to use.

Then I looked up the Moda Bake Shop blog for free down- loadable patterns and I put together this braided rug looking top in the Arcadia range.

I am at present machine appliqueing some borders for this one.

The next one is made using a free cutting technique of my own and a Sultry Layer Cake. Still have some work to do, but I'm busy with the designing of the PNG workshop quilt...

Down Under Quilts Profile and PNG Exhibition

Read about me in the February 2009 issue of Down under Quilts! This is what the cover of the magazine looks like . I was really flattered and excited when they invited me to be a profiled quilter.. Thank you DU Quilts!















This is the opening page of the article, featuring my daughter Amelia's sampler quilt and one of my Australian Indigenous inspired quilts, "The Fire Within". I've decided to include that one in my PNG exhibition, "Feelings of Place" featuring my African and ethnic inspired quilts. Most will be for sale, some are from private collections, and commissions are welcome.
The exhibition will be at the Ela Beach Hotel on 3rd and 4th April 2009. Tickets for the opening event on Friday night will be available. I will continue posting information as it comes to light.
To see these two quilts, and many of my others, visit my website and click on Quilts.