Where Poppies Grow in September

The September block in the "Remembering Almo" project required a little thought, followed by a little rule breaking for me.  As you know I have been making my blocks using the army uniform colors of my Grandpop who saw service at Gallipoli.  But this block is named Red Cross and really did, to my mind, need to feature red. Looking through my fabric collection under the red heading I was able to find a red that had somewhat of a brown base to it so it will hopefully blend in with my other blocks.

Servicemen in the trenches were often victim to illness because of their poor living conditions as well as the expected war wounds. Thus hospitalizations and organizations such as the Red Cross were of major importance.

For Grandpop the month of September had several important dates. September 1, 1914 was when he signed up for war service at Oamaru. Prior to that time he had been working as a labourer on his grandfather James McAuley's farm at Georgetown (near to Oamaru).

On September 4, 1915 Grandpop was evacuated from Gallipoli to Malta with a diagnosis of enteric fever (typhoid). There was a very long hospitalization and convalescence after which he was finally transferred to Sling camp for a short training period where, after two weeks, he was appointed Temporary Sergeant on September 25, 1916. The next day he left Sling for service on the Western Front in France.

As you can understand, including the Red Cross block in the project is particularly appropriate.

The photograph above was taken during the time Grandpop was with the No. 6 Officer Cadet Battalion in Oxford, England. His active service in the front lines had ended on June 18, 1918 and he was posted to Oxford on July 5.

Quilts as Art

Summer has been very long and packed full of activity for me and I have slipped behind with my blog posts. Each morning I have to figure out which hat I really must put on for the day: exhibit/challenge leader, quilter or blogger to say nothing of the usual and/or mundane ones that also must be worn like homeowner/domestic toiler, family organizer, friend...

This post will feature something I did wearing firstly my "exhibit chair" hat for Great Falls Studios (GFS) but also my personal quiltmaker personna so I could enter one of my own pieces for the exhibit.

Founded eleven years ago GFS is a group of local artists who all live and/or work at their art in Great Falls. We number just over 100 members who work in a variety of mediums; the majority work with paint or camera but we have a sprinkling of other mediums including fibre, wood, clay. In September we had our first major all-media juried show and it remains on display until the end of September at the USGS in Reston. The show was a huge amount of work for my co-chair Silvia and I but it was very well received.

Thanks to Silvia Gonzalez Roman for the photo above taken at the end of hanging day. Because the exhibit was to hang in the United States Geological Survey building we wanted to give it a theme loosely tied to the mission of that particular Federal agency thus the exhibit title "A Sea of Sticks and Stones".


One challenge that I have personally taken on in recent years is to take quiltmaking out of the craft closet and place it on the art stage where I feel it belongs. This exhibit provided just such an opportunity.

 We had 87 pieces juried into the show but I'm going to give you a quick tour featuring the fiber art while showing you how well the mixed media all hung happily together. For instance, above you can see, starting on the left, one of three pieces by quilter Cindy Grisdela, then an oil painting, two digital photographs, my own quilt piece, a collage with photograph below and finally four lovely pieces by potter Laura Nichols.

 On the left, "Water Lilies II" by Roberta Beasley, which was awarded second prize, "Shades of Autumn" by fiber artist (quilter) Cindy Grisdela which won one of the four honorable mentions and on the right, "In the Attic" a mixed media piece by Jennifer Duncan.

Again starting on the left with "Winter Trees" by acrylic artist MaryEllen Mogee, then "Autumn Forest" by Cindy Grisdela, "My Daughter in Monticello" in oil by Yihan Huff above and "Rosebud"   by photographer Don Fowler below.

And here is a view of my own entry "Sticks Adrift in a Stony Sea".  You'll need to wait until the exhibit is over and my piece is home again so I can take some detail shots to let you see the finer points of my wallquilt.

This is one of the five wall quilts I have stitched up since May so no wonder I have been feeling like I don't have a moment to spare! You should be able to click on the photos to see them at larger scale.

Where Poppies Grow in August

  The block for August is Winged Square and the story that went with it, on the Remembering Almo project, is about the US Field Hospital unit 3 crossing firstly the Moselle River and then the Rhine River. That unit was the first US unit of troops to ever cross the Rhine and it happened on December 11, 1918.

For this block there was a very big challenge with all those tiny squares. There was a fabric sitting patiently waiting to be used and when I measured that flower motif and it fit those tiny squares I decided to go for it and use it. The stripe fabric was also carefully cut and in some areas reminds me of shoulder epaulettes.

Since beginning this project I have been doing some reading about life in the trenches and it was very grim. Many lives were lost, not because of direct wounding by the enemy but by troops succumbing  to typhoid, complications from diarrhea and dysentry and poor diet and living conditions. 

Indeed, in the research done by my sister she comments that Grandpop spent 227 days out sick of the 260 days the ANZACs spent on Gallipoli and this likely saved his life. The last two weeks of August 1915 saw the 8th Company involved in the battle for Hill 60 but by the end of August Grandpop had contracted enteric fever (typhoid) and was evacuated to Malta on September 4, less than a month after his return to Gallipoli.

We now have eight out of the twelve blocks completed for the project. It is time to get serious about creating the setting blocks for I have decided to set my blocks in a style different than the one used by the designer of this Remembering Almo project.

TOM 7 Oberlin Star for The Oberlin Rescuers

The August block is expected out tomorrow so at the eleventh hour I better let you see what my July block looks like!

 This block was something different!  An Ohio Star in collaboration with a Drunkards Path block. I really like the way it looks.

The story for this block revolves around a group named The Oberlin Rescuers who were sympathetic to African Americans being free and being able to obtain an education such as was available at Oberlin College.

I must admit that what was mainly holding up getting this block posted was that I was drawing a blank on how to do my "fun" photo shoot. Thinking I had read that The Oberlin Rescuers rode horseback in their efforts I went on my own scouting mission to the toy archives to find some horses.

I had fun with a setup using the horses and a couple of potato vines to echo the lime green and got the photo I had been thinking about.

Alas, I have just reread the story for the block and I can't really find that riding horseback featured all that much. Oh well.  They did ride in carriages so horses were involved!

My calendar for the upcoming week is very busy so I'm not sure how soon the August block will get made. But it will be completed before the September one is published.

Where Poppies Grow in July

Getting caught up here I hope.

For July, we had a really interesting looking star that the designer has named "French Star". It is a combination of piecing and applique that I think makes for a really good looking and unusual block.

Significant events in July for Grandpop were his promotion to the rank of Sergeant on July 7, 1917 and his posting to the No. 6 Officer Cadet Battalion in Oxford, England on July 5, 1918.

Although the star is named for France I have photographed it in Italy...and in August. I had the block pieced in July but needed to finish it off with hand applique so decided to take it with me on my vacation to Italy the first week of August. I stayed on a vineyard where I sat on the front terrace and hand stitched the melon shapes down which give the star that circular feeling.  Interestingly the vineyard was in the village of Treiso which was a very strong center for the resistance movement in Italy in WWII.

I'm looking forward to getting back on track and working the August block on a more timely basis.

Where Poppies Grow in June

Oh dear, I guess June got away from me in respect of posting this block. Oops.

For this month the name given to the star block is "My Country".

I'm not sure that there is enough contrast with those small triangles at the end of the horizontals and verticals but it's done. And in the spirit of getting this posted I don't have a fun photo of the block posed. Sorry about that.

June was significant in Grandpop's war service because on June 17 1918 his active service ended with his being detached to the United Kingdom.

TOM 6 Salem Star for Charlotte Forten Grimke

Sorry, I'm a little out of order here and you might be wondering about the June Poppies block. It will show up soon though.

 On Saturday I was out at my guild Saturday Sewing event and Pinkdeenster and I were trying to select and cut fabrics for our blocks. That fabric on the outer edge I have had for a while but had not yet found a good spot for it. When I measured the width of those pointy bits it was just the width I needed but then Pink suggested adding in a little of the diagonal line because it would act as an outer darker frame. So that's what I did. Wasn't it a great suggestion? Thanks Pink!

At this point in the project I am watching all the other pretty blocks getting put up on flickr and sighing and wondering if I made the right decision with my own which cannot be called pretty. But, it is what it is. In each block my rule is that I have to use that chartreuse green, I have to use the solid grey as a background and I have to have a bird fabric in there someplace. For the other fabrics I can use what I want so long as it has not already been used.

H'mm, now I am at the halfway point I am thinking it might be an idea to use those fabrics one more time each, maybe in a different combination that the first time around. So we'll see what the block looks like next month and see how that plan works up.

There was a lot of story associated with this block but my usual creativity in matching a fun photo with the block did not bring up anything good at all. The birds therefore provided my subject.

 We like to feed the birds and they do enjoy stopping off at the feeders. Usually there is just the one feeder up and we stock it with sunflower seed which keeps the little birds, who can get through the outer protective cage, quite happy as the squirrels cannot access the seed.  However last time we were at the bird feeder store I suggested we again try the safflower seed as it had been quite a while since we last put it out in a feeder.

Within a day I remembered why we stopped using safflower. The chipmunks love it and can empty the feeder in a day. Here I caught the critter in the act. That animal was so delighted with the new food source it did not want to run away and I got really close with the camera before it took off.

The runaway slaves that we hear about in the monthly stories were never this brazen in their actions!