CIRCLE OF QUILTERS: (from left) Iris Caddy, Pam Verhoeven, Jane Calder, Jenny Eady, Barbara Smithe, Gayle Stubbs, Pat Ritchie, Annette Conrad, Jenny Tetlow, Frances Brown, Lyn Antheunisse and Phyl Hinsch.By KATH GANNAWAY
A QUILTED landscape designed, sewn and embroidered by members of the Steels Creek Stitchers group will form part of an exhibition of panels telling the story of the Yarra River.
“The Long Yarra Quilt” project is a community activity coordinated by artist Kate Whitehouse, which will bring together hundreds of individual pieces reflecting the way the Yarra touches the people and places along its journey.
The completed ‘quilt’ will be made up of panels one metre by two metres from each shire along the river.
The Steels Creek Stitchers group is well under way with its panel, which features valleys, mountains, wildlife, trees, plants, people and, at the centre of it all, the muddy brown Yarra, as it winds its way through the Yarra Valley.
Group member Jane Calder said the group first met with Kate then reminisced with local people about what the Yarra means to them. School children from around the district did colourful drawings, which have provided inspiration for aspects of the design drawn by Jane’s artist husband, Malcolm.
Kate said the pieces she has received so far show an enormous diversity of ideas and responses to the river and an equal range of expression.
“Fine needlework, both by hand and by machine, oil paint, pastel … a huge range of media is being used,” she said.
“Approaches to the subject range from the deeply spiritual to smilingly humorous.”
The completed panels will be assembled later this year for an exhibition that will tell the tales of the river from the mountains to the bay. The panels will then return to the shires in which they were created to tell the stories local to that district.
