By NARELLE COULTER
When artist Emma Anna moved to Colombia five years ago the tropical heat meant she didn’t need many of the clothes that had kept her warm in chilly Melbourne.
Emma set about cutting up her unwanted clothes and storing the pieces of fabric in a battered old suitcase to use in patchwork quilting projects.
Pieces of her dresses, shirts and skirts lay strewn across a wooden table at Dandenong’s Heritage Hill on Thursday night 28 July as the community gathered to celebrate the official opening of the city’s second celebration of textile art, Cultural Threads.
Those pieces of fabric will become part of a giant Community Peace Quilt.
Emma will lead sewing workshops where participants can create their own hexagonal, flower-shaped pieces which will be sewn together to create the quilt. School children across the city have already used needle and thread to create their piece of the quilt.
The finished work will be displayed from 15 August at Dandenong Library.
“The quilt will be a collection of personal narratives,” Emma said.
“I’ve become really connected to Dandenong through working on various projects. I love to come here because it is so diverse.
“My life experience has been as a migrant so I feel I can relate to the experience of the community here.”
The Community Peace Quilt is just one of many Cultural Threads projects and installations taking place across Greater Dandenong throughout August.
The tactile program includes knitting, crocheting, dyeing, weaving, needlepoint, yarn art and installations by guest artists throughout the city.
Harmony Square will host the Tree of Life, the creation of Greater Dandenong school children who have worked with artists Margaret Summerton and Robina Summers.
The installation will continue to grow eventually emerging as a white tree bursting with flowers and butterflies.
At the Drum Theatre artist Kristin McFarlane has installed a curtain of etched glass panels with traces of fabric and pattern.
Walker Street Gallery will host two exhibitions while a colourful paper garland celebrates the threads that connect life and community at the Springvale Library.
At Noble Park a friendship garden will be created by children and families using inspiration from the Australian environment.
At Heritage Hill the work of Northcote tapestry artist Tim Gresham adorns the walls.
Tim was at the Cultural Threads opening on Thursday night and was pleased with how his Rhythm of the Weave exhibition had been received.
“It is good to have your work displayed in a place where people haven’t seen it before,” he said.
The exhibition covers three phases of his creative life over more than a decade. He described his work as abstract influenced by minimal abstraction.
Councillor Angela Long encouraged the community to engage with Cultural Threads.
“Cultural Threads is a beautiful celebration of a number of cultures bought together through art,” she said.
The full Cultural Threads program is available at greaterdandenong.com/culturalthreads.
