Lest We Forget - 100 year Anniversary of Anzac

2015 was the centenary of the Anzacs and Gallipoli. This quilt was made as a commemoration. the Flanders poppies are synonymous with Anzac day here in NZ and creating the 3 D poppies was lots of fun. The inserts are less than perfect but they have the images of my Dad and Robin’s Dad in them - two young men who went off to the Second World war. This was the first time I had attempted to insert photos in a porthole system.

I chose the dark grey marbled background fabric as a foil for the red and also because it reminded me of explosions shells going off. The quilt is machine quilted in a leaf pattern (or as Karen McTavish calls it,Open Cs.

The words machine embroidered are the words of the Anzac prayer: At the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them.

My Stars

When photo image transfers (now called heat transfer) first became available, I was keen to try them out and the idea of this quilt was born. The quilt is completely self designed and begins with a black and white photo of my husband and I on our wedding day at the centre. a starting point. This is surrounded by a very busy patched inner section representing the business of our lives that were chaotic and yet had some order within the chaos. It is held in place by the thin red border. The white corner quilting gives the eye a resting place from the busyness in the centre (and provided me a place for more machine quilting practice). Each side shows photographs of my children growing up: my eldest daughter on the left, my son at the top and my youngest daughter on the right. The bottom has my Mum, my husband and the three children together. The white square represents our son who was still born and who we never had the opportunity to see. My garden surrounds them all