In her second film, author/filmmaker Josie Montano has highlighted the journeys of Italian women who emigrated to Australia as recently as the 1970s.
What better way for me to contribute to raising funds for Josie’s new film The Long Passeggiata, than to make her a quilt that she could raffle? And why not do something I’m passionate about at the same time? Quilt!
The Front
I chose the design, Hello Love by American fabric and quilt designer Heather Bailey, to construct the blocks for the project’s front.
I sewed the hearts in the colours of Italy, red, green and white. For me, the hearts represented the love for the homeland the women would leave behind and the love they were prepared to share with a stranger. They were married to Italian Australian men, by proxy, before leaving their Italian villages.
Sometimes one lad in the village stood in for all the Italian Australian men his fellow villagers married. Sometimes, too, an Italian woman disembarked from the ship in Australia to find an entirely different fellow to the one in the photograph sent to her. So, there was indeed occasional deception, but predominantly, marriages progressed and flourished.
It’s believed the Australian government fervently hoped these married couples would add substantially to the country’s population.
These unions most certainly increased the country’s population, and they added richly to the multi-cultural society Australia is today.
The Back
I constructed the quilt back by piecing together snippets of Australian life, fauna, flora, Holden cars, Christmas at the beach, Aboriginal art, and so on.
It was, for me, a labour of love and I’m thrilled it delighted Josie.
Patricia and I choose Narelle at Byndees in Iluka for our long-arm stitching.
Once again, we employed the services of whomever we knew could drop our quilts into Byndees in Iluka, NSW. (My friend Judy happened to be going that way on this occasion.) Narelle at Byndees chose a heart motif for the stitching.
The shop front of Byndees in Iluka. Patricia and I have entrusted our quilts to Narelle many times.
An aside: In my first attempt at the quilt, I made the mistake of putting a sash around the piecemeal back. The quilt moved on the long-arm machine, chopping off one side of the sashing. That was my first ever very important lesson regarding piecemeal backing. After its return from the long-arm quilter, I created a false sash for this quilt and then put it aside.
I made the entire quilt again, ensuring this time the piecemeal back was much wider on all sides than the front to allow for the movement of the long arm machine. This time, it turned out as I intended. I gave the good quilt to Josie to raffle and the one with the Gumnut Baby sashing to her to keep. She drapes it over the chair she sits in to write.)
The quilt on Josie’s writing chair.
Josie Montano
For Josie’s extensive body of work see http://booksbyjosie.com.au