Well it has been a long time between posts. Life has thrown a few curve balls but it has taken a ball project of another kind to truly get my quilt mojo back. My local quilt group "The Bellarine Quilters" are having our Bi-annual quilt show and to help promote the show we decided to make a big ball.
Two women from our group ventured over to Japan last year to attend the International Yokohama Quilt Show, one of the largest and most prestigious quilt shows in the world. They brought back their ‘brag photos’ and amongst them was a picture of some large patchwork balls that were on display at the exhibition.
Enthused by that photo, we began our "big ball" project. A plastic blow up ball was discovered in the factory of “Conqueror Systems” in Williamstown who kindly donated it to the cause. A template was then made for each panel (24 in all) and members of the group went away with no brief other than to fill up that panel with colour, fun and include a few stars.
Then the laborious task (and I mean about 60 hours of labour) went into sewing together, pulling apart, sewing back together, fitting, tweaking and tweaking again, adding the top and bottom circles etc.etc. until finally we had our delightful ball.
From a seed “what if” idea to the joint effort of an enthusiastic group of women, we present to you the
“The Bellarine Orphan Oblate Spheroid”
Aptly named because many of the panels were constructed from ‘orphan’ blocks amongst our collections and the shape of the ball is more like the earth – an oblate spheroid.
If you would like to see the ball in all its glory, please come to our exhibition at 'The Old Mill' in Portarlington on the Bellarine Peninsua, Victoria. Open every Saturday and Sunday in November 2010 from 12noon to 4pm.