Notes of Thanks

Dimensions: 14 1/2" x 14 1/2"

Completed: July 2004

This one has a story and a half behind it. Pull up a chair!

Anne Williams was my grade 6 teacher, and my husband Andrew's grade 3 teacher (we obviously grew up in the same area). Andrew has the honour of being the first pupil she met on her first day working at the school!  Anyway, Anne decided to start up a choir, which Andrew and I both sang in.
[cut to 8 years later]
Andrew and I both sang in our University's Choral Society, where he recognised me and came up with the original line "Don't I know you from somewhere?". I won't tell you how I responded, but suffice to say I was embarrassed to discover he actually did know me from somewhere!!
[cut to 7 years later]
Anne, still at the same school and having taken the choir from strength to strength (now ranked one of the top children's choirs in the world) decided to hold a reunion concert with choristers from all years of the choir. My parents still live locally, and let me know about it. When I rang Anne to sign up, she asked if I knew of any others and was excited to learn that I was still in touch with Andrew (baritones were not exactly signing up by the dozen). I hassled him on her behalf, and he joined up too. To cut an even longer story short, we married within 2 years of that and naturally had Anne conduct the choir at our wedding!
[cut to 6 years after the reunion concert]
We now have a son who would probably not exist if not for this lady. I wanted to make her something to tell her how much she means to us... then found out she has been awarded a Churchill Fellowship (a big deal in Australia - see more information here if you are interested) to study how children's choirs interact with composers overseas (she's spending 7 weeks in Finland and the US/Canada). So now I really wanted to make her something - flowers or a bottle of wine didn't say what I wanted to say to her.

This miniature quilt was designed in PhotoShop (I don't have fancy quilt software) using musical motifs. I didn't want it to be cheesy, but subtle. I am a musician (B.Mus from Melbourne University) and got a little sick of people buying me presents because they had a picture of something musical on it! I assumed she's had her fair share of that too. I chose a quaver (eighth note to you Americans!!) as the main symbol (because a treble clef used in the same way looks like something my 1 1/2 year old son drew!!!). The border uses a slightly simplified repeat sign (dal segno, if you must know). It's heavily stippled, but not trapuntoed. It got lots of oohs and aahs at my guild meeting, and Mariya (whose machine quilting class I had taken 2 weeks previously) was impressed.

I gave it to her at the last rehearsal, I think she really liked it. She wanted to frame it, but didn't want to cover the label. I should have told her not to be too precious with it - it's been in the washing machine!! Shame I forgot to take the dowel with me - next time I see her I will present her with a 14" stick!

I used a lighter weight thread in the bobbin on Mariya's advice, and all my knotting problems disappeared! I usually place the label over the worst part of the quilting on the back, but for the first time it didn't matter where I put it! The label just thanks Anne for all she's done for my family and children's music. What I wanted to say would take either one word (Thankyou) or 20 pages. *sigh*.

This is an article from our local paper advertising the second reunion concert - for some reason they liked to story of Andrew and me (and little Benny), so here we are. Andrew decided to go to work instead of  the photo shoot - spoil sport!!!