A Sojourn in New South Wales

I have been on holidays. We spent some time on the south coast of New South Wales, one of our favourite locations.  Apart from the delights of sunshine, beaches and no cooking, I found I few nice surprises along the way. 

Mogo, NSW is the new home of Rosemount The Patchwork Shop.  They used to be located in Canberra.  Downstairs is lots and lots of fabric and upstairs is a collection of antique sewing machines.

This Singer 319K attracted my attention.  It has levers on the top for stitch selection.

 

We spent a day driving up the mountain to Braidwood. Braidwood is a historic town that grew during the mid 1800s gold rush and many of the buildings are still in the main street.  The Hanging of the Quilts takes place in Braidwood each year, November 2015 will be the 21st time this event has been organised.

 This is the famous Braidwood Quilt Shop.  Its website says it has the largest collection of theme and novelty prints available in Australia.  I believe them.  The shop is full.  Very, very full.

I found a signature quilt in Braidwood too.  This is hanging in  St. Bede's Catholic Church with a lovely mix of contributions from families and church groups.

You can tell a quilter on holidays - we take the most interesting photos.

A New Sewing Machine for Christmas?

Did you get a new sewing machine for Christmas?  If you didn't, why not check out the latest sewing machine from 1854?

It's so handy - it will with ease sew a yard per minute, and you can drive it by hand, foot, or steam-engine. 

National Sewing Machine Day

13th June is National Sewing Machine Day. That's all the information I can find, but it's enough for a blog post.

This is my machine. It's a Janome 1600P.  Unlike many Janomes it only has one straight stitch, forward and reverse; no zigzag, no fancy stitches.  I cannot make a buttonhole or put in a zip (hooray!) I can quilt a queen sized quilt with it.

 I call her Miranda, after the British actor Miranda Hart (Chummy in Call the Midwife).

Last week's finish was a little quilt for new grandbaby Ryan.  Ryan was two weeks early so it wasn't quite done for his homecoming, but it was finished by his due date.  The pattern is called Hunter's Star and I bought the hand dyed fabrics from Dyed and Gone to Heaven.

I like pieced backs.  The two colour ranges I purchased are Mocha and Peppermint.  When I was ordered the fabric I had to decide between Peppermint and Blue Skies.  When the green fabric arrived I wished I had bought the blue.  I felt a little frustrated at my choice until I went to my stash to find some fabric for the back.  The first fabric I found was the hand print.

Hope you have a chance to get to your machine on National Sewing Machine Day.

Almost Too Many Sewing Machines

On the long weekend we visited Maryborough in central Victoria and discovered the Flour Mill Gallery - home to an amazing sewing machine collection.

The Flour Mill Gallery at Maryborough

The collection is five years old and still growing

The museum entrance - retro rather than vintage

Industrial Singer machines - still in working order

A set of Featherweights

Italian sewing machines

German sewing machines

Japanese sewing machines - copies of the Singer E15,
made in any colour  your heart desired.

Australian machine - made in Bendigo

For sale machines.  I didn't bring one home, although
the gold coloured Singer in the top row was very tempting.

Farmers' Daughters, Farmers' Wives

I get a lot of comments about the workmanship of the original quilt and the obvious talent of the maker.  I certainly will never match the tiny even stitches in the piecing and the quilting.  Without detracting from the overall quality of the sewing, the makers of the quilt were using everyday skills that all women used in the USA in the 1850s.  Sewing by hand was the only option; the sewing machine wasn't affordable for the average household until the 1870s.

The women who made the quilt weren't professional seamstresses.  I can state pretty confidently that each one of them was a farmer's daughter.  Many became farmers' wives, some were farmers' maiden aunts or farmers' mothers.  A few became schoolteachers, one of the few professions available to women in the 1800s.  One became a medical doctor.
For the women of Chester County, sewing wasn't a hobby, it was an essential skill for everyday living.  Education for girls in the 1850s included learning and polishing sewing skills.  Sewing taught neatness, accuracy, careful planning and patience; it was practical as well as creative.  It was an essential part of the school curriculum along with English, reading, spelling and arithmetic. (Source; 'Patches of Time' by Linda Haplin)

The quilt blocks in the Chester Criswell quilt reflect similar sewing abilities.  There is one exception.



Block made by Martha of Oak Grove, Sadsburyville



The fabric is badly damaged, but those little 'spokes' of the wheels are turned under and stitched along each side.  The big circle is like a gear wheel with regular little teeth all the way around.  I don't think I will be drafting a pattern for this block, I hope someone else can show how it was created.

Yes, there are men's names on the quilt too.  My hypothesis is that the men didn't actually make quilt blocks themselves, but signed a block made by their wife or mother.  I would love to be proved wrong.