A Merry Murder and Quilty Christmas.......

 Were you watching Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries Christmas special last night?  (Go to the ABC web site if you missed it or want to watch it again).  Lots of fun - spot the location, which props were brought in  and what really belonged to Montsalvat? Was that wall really there?  Great reasons to watch it again!  But what great use of the Great Hall especially, not an angle or entrance missed.  And of course now we know what all these lights were for.

They'd almost finished removing the snow when this picture was taken - on the quiet, the snow look remarkably like quilt batting! 

 The spirit of Christmas reminds me of the  kindness and generosity of quilters.  Not content with making often complex and beautiful quilts for themselves, as groups, both large and small, they quietly get busy with projects where their time and sewing skills  can be used to help others.   

Take my friend Olga Walters.  Many of you know of her as an award winning art quilter and patchwork teacher.  What most of you wont know is that she is also a brilliant  traditional quilter, absolutely wonderful with colour and design. As you can see by this work in progress.

 In her non-existent spare time she  spends her Friday mornings at St Phillip's Anglican Church in North Box Hill helping teach Sudanese women how to sew.   It is a skill building class that teaches women  to dressmake for a living or to sew for their families - and of course sometimes a patchwork quilt. 

They have a very well set up classroom, many of the machines have been donated, some new, some reconditioned. A little kindergarten is run in the hall  at the church during the class so that mothers don't have to worry about their children. 

 With Christmas  coming  Olga had the  idea to make dolls for these little children.  So she got busy  - she's made ten of these lovely dolls......and no two are the same, each has it's own clothes and a different hair style.  

We are having a very home-made Christmas this year.  I can't show you anything now in case some of our family see this so, on Christmas Night, after our presents are opened, I'm going to start a Twelve Days of Christmas - question is can I have the self discipline during the holiday season to do 12 straight days of blogging?

Merry Christmas everyone!