Seeing the women behind Bathing Belles, the seabreeze Quilters’ delightful, semi-autobiographical work-in-progress, try to stop giggling long enough for a group photograph to be taken is a bit like watching school girls, bursting with stories & secrets, trying to keep quiet during class.
Community quilting groups like Seabreeze, which meets monthly at the Louis Joel Arts and Community Centre in Altona, a seaside suburb outside Melbourne, are the backbone of the patchwork scene. Growing out of the small, informal gatherings of family and friends that once met in quilters’ homes, larger, more formalised groups like Seabreeze now offer similar opportunities for forging inter-generational friendships, trading techniques and devouring decadent afternoon teas.
Seabreeze founder, Kim Reilly, says community quilting groups also offer a range of added extras such as guest speakers and tutors, bus tours and shopping trips, retreats, exhibitions, workshops, fundraising events, charity work and membership of larger associations like Victorian Quilters, which can in turn help with finding venues and securing insurance.
At its heart, though, community quilting offers a close-knit social network and skill sharing that is no longer routinely passed down from generation to generation. All sorts of social changes are behind this, from families moving away from each other to the rise of the time-poor working mum to the mass media’s focus on young people buying rather than making what they need. Kim says the engaging mix of friendship and creativity on offer helps members endure all manner of crises and could be harnessed by governments as a powerful tool in combating serious public health problems like mental illness.
Kim quilted while recovering from clinical depression several years ago and says one woman she knows credits patchwork with saving her life “because without the friendship and occupation and creativity she doesn’t think she would be here”. “I believethat quilting or craft in general would save a lot of people, a lot of women in particular, from any mental health issues, emotional issues, and sometimes health issues,” she says. “That’s because of how much being involved in something gives you... Very few people who get up after a few hours sewing say, ‘I feel dreadful about that’. Their hands are occupied, their minds are occupied, and there has to be a flow-on benefit.”
A generation or two ago many people turned to church groups in times of need. Now, says Kim, quilting friends often fill the breach. “People sew through illnesses, whether it’s their own or loved ones’, they sew through grief and they work their way through a whole myriad of human problems,” she says. “They often find the craft is something that helps them get through it and then there’s the associations that come from that... the friendships. The small friendship groups in particular are very good like that but even a big group like ours, if we know that someone’s not well we keep in touch with them.”
The Seabreeze Quilters recently presented ‘healing heart’ quilts to several members with cancer; they’re currently working on another for a member who lost her son. “It just demonstrates the care that people have for each other,” says Kim.
“In this day and age, when we work so hard and we live so hard, in that our families are often occupied with other activities, finding a craft is a way of (finding) self-expression. Some people do it through yoga, some people do it through art or sport or something and there’s a segment of the community that does it through craft.”
Seabreeze Quilters take care to encourage beginners as well as seasoned patchworkers via a ‘show and tell’ session at each monthly meeting. They also avoid the breed of pedantic patchworkers she calls ‘the patchwork police’. “They are the ones who will ‘tut-tut’ if your corners don’t meet properly,” she says. “At Seabreeze we’ve made it very clear that patchwork police aren’t allowed in the door.”
Bathing Belles
Seabreeze Quilters began in January 2007 with around 16 members (mostly former clients of Kim, who used to run a local patchwork shop). The group now numbers more than 70 members aged 14 to 80 plus and every one of them is represented in the group’s first project - an ongoing labour of love they’ve dubbed Bathing Belles.
Each block in the quilt is a mini-quilt in itself, comprised of three layers of fabric and bound at the edges. Each block is fastened to the next by a ribbon, making it easy to add a new block when a new members joins (or leaves). Each member creates a self portrait on her block on the theme ‘how you’d like to be seen at the beach’. Kim says the fun and variety of the responses epitomises the senseof fun and playfulness of the women involved.The original design concept came from an Australian company called Deezigner Quilts and its Bare Naked range.
Find out more
Seabreeze Quilters meet at midday on the third Saturday of each month at the Louis Joel Arts and Community Centre in Altona. For more information about the group and its upcoming activities (including guest speakers, workshops and a shopping tour scheduled for October) contact
Kim Reilly: kim_reilly00@hotmail.com or phone 9398 2511 or 0409 382 510.
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