A Community Remembers........

A  story of how the community of the city of Greater Dandenong remembered this Anzac Day by creating and then planting a garden of giant "Poppies for Peace" 

Bravo Dandenong

Tomorrow is two months to the day since the last blog.  Bad blog behaviour! But of course there's a very good reason (isn't there always?).  The reason is the poppy project which for Margaret and myself has been overwhelming.

 As tomorrow is Anzac Day  today just happens to feel like the best day to write this blog

Part one of the Poppies For Peace project is now finished.  We have loved every minute of working for the City of Greater Dandenong.  Such an amazing community of so many nationalities .  We had so much enthusiastic help. Fifteen wonderful workshops with schoolchildren, fantastic teachers and  amazing community groups with wonderful and caring leaders. Everyone keen to help make a giant poppy.  All aware that each of our poppies represented a life lost from the country town of Dandenong during the Great war. 

Being involved in a project like this inevitably  becomes a very emotional experience. The Gallipoli centenary is by its very nature distressing so to spend two months working with so many different people from all over the world,  all  wanting to contribute to something they see as important as part of their life as an Aussie, makes for a pretty impressive experience. 

Pictures are far better than words at telling a story so today its the movie.

  Tomorrow, to mark the actual day it will be the story in stills.  

Next week  -   behind the scenes and hows and whys of the poppy design and construction.

We are sooooo excited (again)

There's nothing like a new community project for workshops and a public art installation to build excitement, maybe induce a touch of meglomania, but certainly to create new challenges for Margaret and myself.  

We had an amazing  time yarnbombing the City of Greater Dandenong Civic Centre with the community for the month of Cultural Threads last year.  We are really looking forward  working with the community there again on a new project .

This is a rough representation.............. 

Together we will create oversize poppies to be installed in the Civic Centre lawn as a tribute by the community of the City of Greater Dandenong for this year's centenary of Anzac Day.

 We aim to install forty poppies, one  for every  volunteer who died for King and Country in the Great War from what was then a small but important country  town, Dandenong. 

Prototype flower, fourth attempt, more refinements have been made since- after all they have to be easy to put together and relatively quick to make. 

The inspiration for materials and style came from cards my grandfather sent to my grandmother when he was stationed on the Western Front in France. The cards feature embroidery with  net  and silk decoration.  

The poppies are made from satin, tulle and synthetic knitting wool - more details as we go.

The subject may be serious but creating it is going to be lots of fun.   Making something beautiful is always fun, but sharing the experience is just so much more fun. 

And the challenge?  Well we start next week and the installation will be during the week of April 13th!  Wow, so soon!  Will the two of us and the wonderful and welcoming community of Dandenong make it?  Betcha we do.  You'll just have to watch and see. 

And we make three more prototype poppies this weekend - whoopee!!!  


Postscript
 An explanation for all our wonderful bloggy audience  outside Australia,  the 25th of April,  Anzac Day, is a national public holiday which  commemorates a First World War battle on the Turkish coast.  Troops from Australia and New Zealand fought a dreadful  battle for the British Empire. Their courage and losses are legendary.  Over the decades it has come to represent the moment when Australians and New Zealanders took pride in having a national identity.  The poppy symbol came from the Flanders poppy which has long been used for Remembrance Day, the eleventh of November, in the UK and Australia.  Many, many more Australian troops were lost on the Western Front in Europe. In Australia the poppy has become a tribute symbol for both days. 

 This is a simplistic description, to really understand what it means  to Australians today, especially on the 100th anniversary, you need to explore "Anzac Day Centenary"on the internet.

Couldnt help this - but I discovered this on Princes Bridge on Friday last - I'll send a knitted something  to the first person to tell me exactly where on the bridge it is.

Maybe it just caught the light but I think my mind was focused on textures after leaving the Jean Paul Gautier exhibition at the NGV  St Kilda Road.  That carving has always been there, I just havent noticed it before. 

The blockbuster exhibitions just go on getting better and better and become more and more overwhelming.  Still kicking myself that I left it so late I couldnt go back a second time.  

And that folks is a knitted dance costume.  Soooo brilliant.

So maybe I  was influenced by the poses of the models , but suddenly I noticed statues that had never really come to the front of my mind - or once again was it just the way they caught the light.

   

So walking around to the front.....

Not just textures but all those vertical lines.

Just love a gallery visit, always kicks the brain over!

Hi there Australian Quilters Association

Welcome to the New Year folks. 

Sorry about the long gap of nothing - we had a 92 year old in hospital with a heart operation that suffered complications and it was touch and go for too long - just didnt feel like blogging then.  All is well now, miracles do happen, she's 93 now, back in her home and reasonably independent  so its feeling like a happy new year now.

What better way to start the year than by giving a talk to the Australian Quilters Association - it was there many years ago  I got my introduction to art quilting and they were the beginning of so many wonderful friendships.  My very good friend Dijanne Cevaal will be introducing her beautiful new book - come and have a look. Its going to be a great day.   

My subject is "The Importance of Being Earnest - a side effect of community and textiles".  I hope there's a few surprises there.

I'm bringing along a few friends too, meet Hairry Flamingo

He has a friend,  Princess, with hairy legs

Possibly purple leg warmers for dancing practice.  They have a smaller acquaintance
Violetta De Lórange

Vi has lots more friends which she has invited to come.

We are going to have fun!

I set myself a rule when I started writing a  blog - it would always be fun and never take anything seriously.  Today I break this rule!

Its not a Flanders poppy, but it is a red poppy with the black centre. It is always starts to flower  in the second week of November  and there is always a new flower open on Remberance Day.  This one greeted me this morning!

Everyone is knitting poppies for the Anzac Day centenary but my memory is always of poppies for  the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month when the War to End All Wars officially ceased.  

This year I felt sadder than usual so I made a poppy for our joint grandfathers and great uncles, then I thought about our parents generation and the second war  and family in occupied Europe. It is a day of great sadness so I made a Rememberance Day bird for all of them and both wars.

This is a bird of contemplation - is he looking backwards or to the future.........

All our family of both generations came back and made great lives for themselves and their families.    We always stop to remember the dead but over the years the living and their families have paid a price too.

Same bird settled in a wattle tree.  This photo is for Tom.  He lived just down the road from us when I was at primary school.  One day when I was about eleven he loaned me a book to read.  It was his published diary from his days at the front in France and later as a prisoner then as an escapee.  I'd never seen a horror movie, or read a horror story - and this was horror but with a sort of happy ending - after all he got home, raised a lovely family and had a good life.  But it was a true story, and even harder to comprehend it was written by a lovely gentle old  man I actually knew!

Four years later  when I read all Quiet on the Western Front I got a terrible shock when I found I'd been barracking for the "wrong"side for most of the book - what a lesson!

Cup Day Holiday for Birds

What an exceptionally beautiful day, the sun will shine on the Melbourne Cup.

I think he is inviting her to share a punt on................oh dear, I'm ashamed to admit that this year I dont know the names of any of the  horses running today. 

 Or they could be discussing the cup in the background.  It was my wonky attempt at mood setting, no it does not contain ashes.  It is in fact a sugar bowl - those little horse shoes all round are for hanging teaspoons.  Where did it come from - well it was a wedding present given to my parents and as it was just  postwar it was secondhand so no idea what its history is.  

Of course he could be paying her a compliment on her hat or her necklace.  The Cup is after all an excuse for flirtatious dressing.  

Just a brief blog as befits a most important holiday.