Another Finish

I managed a second finish this week, just in time for Fangirl to enter it in the local show.

Each year our local show (Agricultural Show) has a special category in the craft section based on a particular theme. Entries can be in any medium. This year the theme was the Centenary of ANZAC. (Look here if you want to learn more about what Anzac is all about.)

Fangirl had found a really cute cross stitch pattern that she was keen to use. I have started to make some of her cross stitches into little wall hangings (something different to getting them framed which can get rather expensive) So I said I would make it into a wallhanging for her, and then suggested we add the photos of her great great great uncles and maybe the embroidery designed by her aunt and..... it grew a bit. I also suggested we add some other embroideries to it - perhaps the slouch hat or the Rising Sun badge, the badge worn on the hats...and it grew a bit more.

I went on line to find designs to add to it but couldn't find any patterns for hand embroidery - only machine ones. Instead I found some photos which I copied and then fiddled around with to make the right sized and then traced off more simply onto fabric. Later I realised it would have been better if I had done them onto paper first - then I would have had a copy but at the time I was in too much of a hurry. (I was going away for 10 days and wanted to have some handwork to take with me)

This is me stitching on the plane - the steward asked me to put the needle away for takeoff and landing so I didn't hurt myself or others in case of an incident. 

I found a picture of an Australian flag - not a flag all laid out stiff and unnatural but curling a bit around the flag pole. When I printed it out the right size the stars weren't clear enough for me to trace so Fangirl was able to put it into another program and muck around with it and redrew the stars so they were appropriately placed and shaped for the way the flag was folding.  

So - she did the cross stitches (there are two - the new one she stitched of the child wearing the slouch hat 

and wrapped in the Australian Flag, plus one about the Red Cross 

which she had stitched last year when it was the special category at the show) and I did 4 embroideries plus printed out photos of my 2 great uncles. Finding the special printer fabric was a job and half as well. 

 

I cut into my stash of Australian Native flower fabric to frame each of the blocks - each one a different fabric, except for the photos which I used the same fabric for.

Wesley James Ethersey Putland and George Arthur Temple Putland were my maternal grandmother's 2 younger brothers who enlisted one day after the other on the 27th and 28th August 1914. They embarked for the Middle East on different ships but both ended up on Gallipoli together and were killed one day apart at the same place. They were 24 and 20 at the time.

Anzac Day is on 25th April and there are services and street marches in every Australian community as well as services at Anzac Cove in Turkey itself. The Dawn service is always well attended and holds special significance as that is the time the troops actually landed. The service at Gallipoli is a joint one with New Zealand and Turkey. This year there was massive interest and the crowd there was huge. There were  speeches by dignitaries but it is the one by the New Zealand Prime Minister John Keys which stuck with me. 

I will not say lest we forget because after 100 years we can say on this day April 25, 2015, we remember. (John Keys, prime minister New Zealand)

I called this quilt "Anzac - We Remember"