Weekly Dispatches 4 April

G'day all.  

Before anything else I have an email from Chaplain Jason on HMAS Darwin to share with you.  I asked for his permission to share it with you and he said 

"I am more than happy for you to use my email on your blog and happy for you to put my name and ship with it - no need for anything to be anonymous especially if it gets the message out to your wonderful team how much we appreciate what they do."

So here is the original email 

"An enormous amount of mail and a number of quilts, laundry bags etc arrived.  I know because people were coming up to me during the afternoon saying 'Did you see what I got from the Aussie Quilters?'  Obviously I hadn't so they showed me photos.  Extremely happy people with enormous smiles all over their faces.  But not only that, some of the crew also received care packages from whoever made their quilt originally - and they were speechless.  The PO Medic on board received not only his Sydney Swans quilt but also a signed Sydney swans cap from some of the players - we are never going to hear the end of that!

I also got my Simpsons laundry bag from Debbie and it is amazing.  If not for my initials on it, someone would have taken straight out of my hand.

Aussie Hero Quilters are definitely a star of each mail run - please give my enormous thanks to you and all your team for their amazing love and generosity to our crew - I only wish they were here on board to see their faces when they open their parcels! :-)"

I don't know about you but emails like this just make me want to sew more!

:-)

I think those of you who have been around Aussie Heroes for a while know that I often don't have much spare time so I only keep the records that are absolutely necessary.  One of the things that I cannot keep track of is how many quilts and laundry bags people make which is why I love it when people let me know.

I once wrote a blog post on the three main laundry bag making mavens we have here at Aussie Heroes, Sue N, Julie Ann and Joan.  It was easy to work out who I should feature as they had made such a large number of laundry bags between them and made them so regularly that it was easy to know who to focus on.   There is no way I could do the same with the quilters as  there are so many quilters.  Some, like Lynn, have made lots of quilt tops, in Lynn's case, more than 100!  Some make whole quilts and some have made their own quilts as well as quilting quilts for others. 

I would love to do some profiles on some of our wonderful quilters but I don't want to offend anyone by leaving someone out and I can't decide what order to profile people in.  So I am leaving it to you.  I would love it if you know how many quilts you have done if you would let me know and send me some photos of the quilts that are your favourites and let me know why.  It doesn't matter if you have done one quilt or many.  We have found in the past that those who read this blog enjoy reading about those who sew for it.  I hope you will play along and take part and I will feature those that do in upcoming posts.

For tonight I just have to say congratulations to Joan who tells me that this is her 500th laundry bag.  Joan started making laundry bags after her son came home from an Operation Slipper deployment on HMAS ANZAC, the first ship we looked after, and showed her the quilt and laundry bag he received.  She noted how proud he was of them and decided that she could do the same for someone else.  Well she has now put smiles on at least 500 faces with her laundry bags, ably assisted by her husband. Robin, who threads the cord through.  
Congratulations Joan and Robin!

So on with this week's Weekly Dispatches.

215 quilts and 350 laundry bags for 2014.  

2577 quilts and 4077 laundry bags in total.

Alice

Angela 

and hand dyed backing by Judy

Bev 

with her own hand dyed backing

Chelly

Debbie

Irene 

Love the fish hook quilting 

Not sure the red braids show up in this pic

More awesome quilting from Irene!

Jenny and Gale

Katherine - note he wanted pink and white to share with his daughter

so Katherine made him "His" and "Hers" sides

Kim M

Leanne

Robin

Sue N 

  more by  Joan

Sue N

Sue P

Hilary Ml

Kaye's Girls

Michele

note, this is for a Guardian Angel.  :-)

Stephanie T

Louise Turner and the Dolphin Quilters

Till next time.................keep spreading the word and happy stitching!  JMxx