Greetings from Montevideo, from Alison Schwabe, Aussie quiltmaker

Last night I went to an evening organised to enable WAFTA (WA fibre textile artists) people to meet and listen to a couple of visiting UK weavers and their unusual looms. The interesting shapes the loom configurations enable have some potential - but, not being a weaver, I can comment not much further than that! and from my point of view it was even more interesting to meet with so many WA textile people I hadn't seen for ages, who had all brought along something for display during the evening. I had something very recent to take along too; there was some great stuff on show. Jenny Abbott's lovely dresses particularly caught my attention - she's got a large repertoire of techniques, and, with the toned down more subtle colour schemes, it was great to see how her work is maturing. Today I will be meeting with Margery Goodall and Marjorie Coleman, Wendy Lugg , Cherry Johnston and Marion McGee, possibly the hard core of Perth's contemproary quiltmakers, and will see more of Margery's recent work than the few lovely pieces she had on display last night. I too have held back a couple more things to show just them.... then after that the hectic schedule switches to resumption of house maintenance issues, and the visiting the friends and rels schedule in the evening. I have gathered up all the quilts I came to gather ( these have just returned home from touring foreign parts, without me, in various collections) I have bought the usual several metres of my fav. batting, a couple of meters of fabric, and that case is almost packed.... still a book shop visit to do, and a grocery visit to scoop up some vegemite, curry paste and a couple of other essentials, which I will leave to the last minute rather than keep going back, as Mike tends to add just one more thing to the list just after I have shopped ... but I'm already mindful that this time next week I will be in Tas and almost ready to head to Sydney for a day (The Expressive Stitch exhibition, Fairfield Galleries) before flying out on saturday 9th to head back to Montevideo.... sigh, time flies.

One of the things I have done since arriving back in Perth is scoop up a few quilts that I had either left here, or which had returned here after being exhibited somewhere else - and these are two I haven't seen in ages. Both will be going with me to my solo exhibition in DC in June. I have at least two other fire quilts, one very small the other rather large, which will be an interesting group. The other quilt, Mirage, is an early one in the series I now call Ebb and Flow , but perhaps it bears more connection really to "Lightstream", which you can see in full on my website, gallery page 6 I think ... anyway towards the end there. go to www.alisonschwabe.com where you will also find full information about the exhibition itself.
I don't know what time the blogger site is set to - I suspect it's Joe's my florida webmaster's, ...that explains some of the odd times that are appearing at the bottom of my posts.

charcoal and cream triangles, approx 10" sides, an early e&f quilt, mirage2 

1m x 75cm approx, a small irregular shaped quilt on fire 

wads trimmed down, set out in rows, ready to be joined into top 

trimmed to 4 1/2", ready to sew together 

After a couple of fairly spacey days I am now feeling more normal after travelling from Montevideo to Perth this week. I'll be checking on everything here, a bit of house maintenance etc, catching up with rels, a few friends and of course, some close quiltmaking and textile friends. Already I have seen Wendy who has offered some interesting reactions/critique on the couple of quilts I have brought with me. Last week I posted a view of my sewing room in Montevideo, and on the wall what looked like a heap of bits of ? fabric and brown and cream ... that's right, a work in process; the blocks have now been trimmed down to 4 1/2", and the top sewn together, partly so I could show it while here. It is what I feel is the last new piece I need to make for my forthcoming solo exhibition in Washington in June ... I'll have plenty of time to quilt and bind it when I return to Uruguay. Although I do not normally show a work in progress, I have included a close up of it today, which gives you some idea of what it will finally look like. It's not because I fear copying - there's nothing technically in my work that could not be easily copied. I just prefer not to let work be seen until it has been fully resolved and executed to my own satisfaciton, bound and signed. And I don't complete it until I am happy - and for some reason, this one was a bit agonising to work through. However, by the time you saw the wads of fabric on the wall last week the logjam had cleared and I was surging forward confidently to the strains of Beethoven's 5th. How will I quilt this one ? I always have some kind of plan, and it often totally changes - so I generally work on a sample block, as normally I can expect to pull out what I have done at least twice before I really get going.

The coming week will also be interspersed with getting the car serviced and repaired, investigating 'something sticky' that occasionally drips through the ceiling in the back room - I fear bees have got in.... and file the mountain of paperwork that has heaped up since I was last here last year. And other admin stuff. Oh, and one of my fav. activities - shedding and in some cases, shredding, old bills etc we no longer need to store. I am looking foward to going to the ABC bookshop, and a couple of other similar places, and to buying some winter shoes ... you may be wondering what is wrong with shoes in Uruguay? Nothing, they make lovely ones, fabulous leather - but standard sizes stop at about 8 1/2. People in that population are smaller boned overall and have smaller feet. So my options there are to either have them custom made, but the styling is a bit different; or to buy HushPuppies which for some reason have stores there...but they aren't ideal for every occasion, are they? !!! It's frustrating at times, but, being able to be back here from time to time means I can cope OK if I plan. Same with clothes.

fruit and veg market, evey sunday, right outside our house - view from my sewing room window
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my sewing room - looks out onto the street - absolute luxury of space plus light 

In the street right outside our house, every sunday morning are fruit and vegetable vendors ranged up along half the block on the other side. What a wonderful sight to pull up the blinds and see all the pyramids of oranges apples, tomatoes, onions - in fact, most of the produce out there Aussies would recognise. Same with the fruit, but different varieties in some cases. There are also a couple of vans which stock fresh eggs, cheeses, suasage, butter, a few canned vegs and sauces and spreads, mayonnaise, jams and the chief uruguayan food group, dulce de leche. At one end is a plant and flower lady - and the other end quite often is another woman with several roses in pots. Both generally do quite well. On a box outside our gate sits a guy selling newspapers - most of them go over the several hours. They set up the stalls before the crack of dawn - now I never notice the slight setting up noises in the dark - but if I do, I like knowing they are busily working out there, but they are very quiet - in contrast to the racket when they are packing up to leave around 2-30 early afternoon, clattering boxes, dogs barking led by the one next door, and loud, cheerful banter going back and forth along the street, diesel trucks idling loudly, being loaded up with wooden crates noisily banging gainst each other, guys whistling, melodiously, or not.... I'm sure I heard snatches of Pedro the Fisherman this afternoon .... If we need to get our car out while the market is in progress, a flurry of activity ensures boxes are moved to one side, and that the driver is carefully guided in turning etc before slowly driving off down the street. Before we agreed to take this place, I feared it might be a pain, but not so. We came and invstigated, and found it was fine. We live near a corner, so any early visitors to our home can park a mere 70 or 80 yards away - its no problem. And a lovely part of local colour. By 3pm, the street has been swept, generally well, and they have all gone. Monday the council sends a guy to sweep up any rubbish - receipts and so on, from the road gutter and foot path.

Hmmm, uploading pics, I haven't quite mastered it, but am working on it, In searching through the pics I can't find Showroom Architecture, so they must be prints in a little album - and there's a whole box of those .. so, this may take a bit longer. I'll find something else interesting to upload and comment on in the meantime.

And another arbol borracho - they are out in flower now, but no two trees have a similar distribution of flowers. this one in our garden is flowering on just one branch. Next year another part of the tree, perhaps, or the whole tree may show flowers... does this odd behaviour deserve the name they have, though ? They are pretty, pink and yellow, a bit orchid like, and slippery on footpaths after a shower of rain especially.  

arbol borracho - literally drunken tree - why? 

"Greetings from Montevideo "as many of my emails and letters from this city have been headed over the past 4-5 years I have been living here more or less full time.
Sounds a bit vague?
That time is hard to actually quantify, as we didn't move here, it was more a gradual, morphing process, rather like what I call pedestrian creep - where the crush of pedestrians surges forward and forces vehicular traffic to actually stop.... then after a little while, when that surge dies down, vehicles creep forward and pedestrians finally have to stop and wait for the backed up vehicles to move forward ... Nowhere is this more evident than on Av.Tristan Navaja on a sunday morning, the corner of Uruguay being a classic case - that's the one where the herbs and spices lady is on one corner, and one of the vendors of bids/kittens/puppies/rabbits/and occasionally more exoitic creatures, is on the opposite corner. Nearby is the vendor of torches, various batteries and alarm clocks, which all seem to be set to be going off contsantly, bip bip bip bip bip bip - how he stands it I can't imagine, especially if like most feria vendors he takes his goods to a different location each day of the week ....

Now, just as soon as I figure out how to do it, in the next day or two, I am going to up load a pic or two on subjects dear to my heart here. One is architecture. This city has an incredible variety of lovely examples of most of the main periods of european style arcitecture over the past 250 years, with a special note on Art Deco, which we love. There are books and papers on this. However, a little- studied sector of the local architecture, what I term "Showroom Architecture", I have been photographing and studying over the years - there is some amazing stuff, which, from the look of some of it, should not actually stand up , and in some notable cases, definitely should not be able to withstand several stories of new car showrooms...... then there is an amazing new house down at La Pedrera on the E Coast, which in its style evokes the feel of an ocean going yacht, but it's subtle....and lovely.

Another interest is textiles. I make quilts, but the ferias and antique shops of Montevideo have provided happy hunting grounds over the years for the kinds of things I might have made if, instead of studying in the 60's, I had put time and effort into a glory box and a trousseau....