FOQ and Bonnets

I think I need to own up. The fact that I spent so little money at the Festival of Quilts on Thursday had nothing to do with willpower or self restraint. I spent the day with a dear friend who I hadn't seen for almost a year and although we managed a good look at the quilts there was so much catching up and chatting to do that there wasn't much time left for shopping... especially if you include the time spent queuing for food, only to find there were no sandwiches left... and then the time spend looking for somewhere to sit down to eat our lunch of cake! Then when we did brave the crowds to shop it was somewhat overwhelming, plus there were more people to chat to and by then it was time to go home. I'm almost tempted to go again tomorrow just to shop!

But the show was excellent. I loved seeing all the new graduates' work - so inspiring! I find the standard of the quilts does vary enormously, with a few really poor examples but there were several stunning quilts on display... including this one from Julie... It really did work cutting it into strips!

And Carolyn's lovely St. Ives quilt. Both were much more beautiful than my poor photographs would suggest. My friend Sandra also has a stunning quilt in the show which I forgot to photograph (sorry Sandra!) but you can see it on her blog here.

One of the few things I spent money on was a pattern to make a bonnet. Christina Henri is an artist from Tasmania who has set up a project called Hearts and Roses to commemorate the 25,566 women convicts who were transported to Australia from 1788 to 1855. She aims to have a hand made bonnet for every single one of the women - so far she has more than 17,000 and she hopes to reach her target by 2012. It was quite overwhelming to see the display of so many of the completed bonnets, and certainly thought provoking to consider these women as individuals many of whom had commited such petty crimes.

Each bonnet is embroidered with the name of the woman, the name of the ship on which she was transported and the year of her transportation.

I spent yesterday afternoon making a bonnet for Mary Moran, a 20 year old Irish girl who was sentenced to seven years for stealing clothes and was transported to Tasmania in 1842 on the ship Hope.

I'm not entirely sure Mary Moran would have sported a beard quite like my model...

But it was very good of him to agree... (I suspected he quite liked it really!)

This will now be sent to Christina in Australia where eventually it will become part of a permanant display.

If you would like to take part you can find out more about the project on Christina's website:

http://www.christinahenri.com.au/