First lot of quilts on their way.

I received an email today from Yaso and am printing it here for the benefit of the quilt donors who wish to keep track of what is happening:

Gina,

the quilts are on-board the ship and on their way to PNG. Brilliant.

I will collect them on the 9th January 2014 - when I get there and take them up to the villagers.

regards
yaso



Dr. Yaso Nadarajah
Senior Research Fellow ( Globalism Research Center) & Lecturer
School of Global, Urban and Social Studies

Quilts on their way to PNG.

Seventy four quilts and bunny rugs are now on the first leg of the journey to the babies of Patea, Papua New Guinea. Yaso and her husband came to our place last night and collected them all. I'd packed them up into bags, and they just fitted into the back seat of their car. Yaso now has to organise for them all to be transported to Brisbane by next Wednesday, when they will be put into a container along with other goods, and shipped to PNG. She was very fortunate to have contact with a businessman who is willing to include the quilts in his container of commercial products, free of charge.

When she arrives there on January 9th, Yaso will collect the quilts from her agent and take them up into the hills to be distributed among the native tribes. The natives know about this and are looking forward to seeing our quilts, and Yaso will have one of her students with her to record the giving of each quilt to a mother and baby. She will pass these photos on to me, and I'll be able to publish them on this blog, so everyone can see who has received the quilt/s they have so kindly made.

I already have another four quilts still to be finished off, and more donations are in the pipeline. Yaso will be going to PNG again later next year, and will be able to take the next batch of quilts then.

December 13. Six quilts from Melody in Vic.

Melody of The House On The Hill made these gorgeous cheerful quilts and her hubby delivered them to my place on her behalf - thank you both!

December 3. One quilt from Missouri USA.

This was a surprise, as I don't recall having an email from this lady before, so maybe she got my details from a friend.  Bonnie Harris in Missouri, USA sent this beautiful cot quilt.

Something that makes a donation from the USA even more special is the cost of shipping - in this case it was $18.60, which is a lot of money to post one quilt across the world for donation to a third world country.  Thank you very much, Bonnie - your quilt will be greatly appreciated.

Another quilt from Gina.

I've had this sitting around for a month, waiting to be finished, and today was The Day. Now that I've got this one done, I'll start on some more. I've had so much fabric donated to me, I want to put it to good use now that I've got a new machine which is much faster than my old one. No excuse to dilly dally now!

October 25th. Three quilts from Lynda in NSW.

These three gorgeous quilts arrived from Lynda in NSW today.  Two have machine embroidered animals and icons on them - delightful!  Thank you so much Lynda - they will be loved by the PNG babies.

October 18th. Two quilts from California, USA.

Today I received two beautiful quilts from the other side of the world, from Kelli in California, USA.  I'll be taking photos of them in a day or two and will post them here.  But for now,  many thanks Kelli - it is very  kind of you to think of these little babies so far away from your own homeland.

Update:  here are Kelli's quilts -

October 8th. Eight quilts from NSW.

This parcel of lovely warm bunny rugs and quilts arrived last week from a group of ladies in Macksville, NSW.  They do have an interesting name for themselves, but have asked me to refer to them as the Monday Morning Girls!  Thank you all very much ladies - these will be greatly appreciated by our PNG babies.

September 10th. Twenty rugs from Mill Park, Vic.

Sue N who lives in Mill Park, an outer suburb of Melbourne - is one very generous lady!  She has made 4 quilts and 16 bunnyrug style wraps for our PNG babies!  Rather than photograph them all individually, I simply piled them on the floor to take one picture.  That does not make them any less appreciated than others that I have photographed individually!   Sue also gave me a huge bag full of fabrics cut into pieces ready to make up into more quilts.   I have thanked her in person of course, but want to acknowledge her kindness here as well - many thanks again, dear Sue - hope to catch up with you again soon!

When I collected these from Sue, we dropped into Savers, where I found two gorgeous little baby quilts for $3.99 each, so I snapped them up to give to Yaso :-)

September 3. Quilt from Sue W. in NSW.

A second cosy warm quilt from Sue.   What a great way to use your scraps!  How easy it is to make quilts from your stash scraps by simply joining them together, cutting them into neat lengths, separating the coloured lengths with sashing, and finished off with the wadding and backing, or simply a warm flannelette backing!

August 31. Ten bunny rugs from Jane L. in Leongatha, Vic.

On Sunday, Jane from Leongatha in rural Victoria, delivered ten bunny rugs to me for the PNG babies.  She'd made them all from flannelette - lovely and cosy for wrapping babies up on cool nights!

August 12. Two quilts by Gina.

I've used a different technique with this quilt - the 'envelope technique', so it doesn't need binding.  All I have to do is quilt it, and sew the last side up.  I love that fish fabric; it was an offcut from somewhere, maybe the opshop,  I can't remember.  But I knew I'd find a use for it one day!

August 5. One quilt from Sue W in NSW.

This lovely quilt arrived today from Sue W. in NSW, who emailed me to say she is not an expert quilter.  Hey!  Did I say I only wanted expert quilters to donate??  No - this is for anyone who is kind enough to use up some of their stash for a good cause!  I think Sue's quilt is just as charming as all the others that have been donated so far.

Update, 1st August.

I have been emailing photos to Yaso every time I receive a donation of quilts, and today I received an email from her, part of which I am reproducing here so you can all see how much your work is appreciated:

The quilts encourage me constantly to carry with my work.  I am organizing to have the quilts and other things transported to PNG  end of year. This will work with me going there Jan 2014. The tribe is already so thrilled with knowing about the response to your quilts call. They are so overcome that so many people care and you are coordinating all this because of your own enormous care for them.  

So, thank you all again for your donations.  I know of many more that are on the way here, so by January, Yaso will have a veritable shipload!!

July 31. Five quilts from Madeline in Toowoomba, Qld.

July 3. Four quilts from Maria in Dongara, Western Australia.

Today I received a large Aust Post Satchel from Maria in Western Australia, stuffed with four beautiful baby quilts!  Ken was very touched when he saw them - he couldn't believe that somebody so far away would go to all that effort for people she had never met and probably never will meet.  I said that's what quilters do :-)
Here they are on the clothes line:

July 4, Three quilts from Ida in Texas, USA.

 These cost Ida US$60 to post by air. This is more than generous - I can't find the best word to describe what I felt when I saw how much she had paid to send quilts to Australia for babies in P.N.G. Ken said we should email President Obama and let him know about the big hearted people in the biggest state :-)

July 4. Two bunny rugs from Sue in Sth Aust.

July 3. Request from Yaso to name each quilt.

I received an email from Yaso tonight in response to mine yesterday, showing her the first batch of quilts to arrive here.
Hi Gina,

could the quilt makers embroider their name, town & country on the side?? It would be so good for the recipients to know who they are and to have that on their quilts as well.

What I will attempt to do is also get the recipient's name - and also photo - and we can start to have a file of all these - for an exhibition/story down the track.

Yaso

 I suggested to Yaso that I could make up labels on my computer, using a template so they are all the same, except for the individual's details.  This would be quick and easy for me to do, printing the labels onto fabric, and stitching them on to each quilt.  That way, they would all be easily identified as being made by this group of quilters from my blog, for whatever exhibition or story Yaso is thinking of doing.

June 19. First two quilts are given to Patea babies.

Today I received an email from Yaso with photos showing the people in Papua New Guinea who were given the two quilts I gave Yaso for their babies.  Here is what she said, and her photos with the mothers and their babies are below.  What do they say - a picture is worth a thousand words? 

We asked in the first village  Akwanje for the most recent child born. The mother was still feeding the child as I gave her the quilt. She cried for a long time with happiness. 

Then we went to the next village Yakepa.  These two villages are so very remote and only a handful of outsiders have been there. Took me and my team more than 36 hours to get there (by truck). It was such a beautiful ceremony and the little ones were crying and then when I wrapped the  quilt around each, they started laughing and holding out their hand to me. The people loved the loving gift from someone who has known about them. They know your name - and send their gratitude. I will get the names of the children and the parents for you very soon. In the midst of so many things to respond to, I forgot to write them down.  One of the child (Yakepa)  has Albinism. More quilts would be glorious.

March 9. First two quilts from Gina.

Ken's cousin David and his wife Yaso came to visit us today before Yaso flys out to PNG tomorrow to meet the tribal leaders of the community she is providing assistance to.  She said the elders are already walking to the village where she will be driven to from the airport.  It takes them four days to walk through the forest to reach this village, so she always makes sure she never misses the flight that takes her to Port Moresby for the truck that meets her to transport her to the village.

 I took the opportunity to photograph her with the two quilts I gave her to take with her.  One is the cot quilt I posted a photo of here yesterday and the other is a slightly larger quilt that has been on the back of our couch for a couple of years.  It was given to me by one of my home care clients who won it in a raffle but didn't like it.  So there is no emotional attachment to it for me, and I decided it would be of much better use in a community of people who are living in the forests of PNG on whatever plants they can find.

Yaso is in the process of teaching them to keep chickens, harvest water properly to grow small crops, and other basic survival techniques that the rest of the world take for granted.  I have asked her to do a brief write up for me to post on a blog along with photos of the conditions under which the natives live and where she works with them.  In the meantime, I will continue making small quilts out of my stashs, and will gladly accept any that anyone reading this would care to make.  Yaso says to make sure that the quilts have names of the makers on them so the native elders can explain to the women where the quilts come from and who made them.  She said it is part of their nature not to just accept any 'charity' without proper ceremony thanking the donors, even if they are not there, and she will photograph each quilt with it's new owner as they are distributed.

It would be greatly appreciated if anyone reading this would post a link to it on their blog so word can get around. I know there are other bloggers making full size quilts for our Aussie servicemen, and of course Jan Mac of Oz Comfort Quilts has been distributing quilts to disaster victims for years now.  But my request might be easier to work with for those people like me who don't feel able to make a full size quilt for any number of reasons, but a little cot quilt is just a fun thing taking a couple of hours, and using up some of those scraps that all fabric collectors have!