Christmas this year was a very busy one for me and my family. Our shop was fortunately flat out before the big day and my family worked hard over the break to get our family home in Ocean Grove ready for letting out for the holidays.
Christmas day itself was the usual double family event with this year having my dear husband's big birthday (OK - 60) to celebrate as well.
Yesterday I travelled through a 43C heatwave to visit my embroidered Xmas star at the Johnstone Collection.
This is a Victorian terraced house in East Melbourne which houses a collection of fine and decorative arts.
My star as I mentioned in an earlier post is part of the Xmas decorations this year. It is near the front of the big Xmas tree in the Green Drawing room. I was pleased to see that it looked just as good as the other 99 stars. (The photo here is of the room as it is normally - without decorations!)
All the rooms were filled with the most amazing items made by arty crafty people from Geelong. Some were small and exquisite like the tiny tree hung with hand made lace ornaments. Others were huge like the large tree made of slumped glass panels and decorated with swags of beads, crystal and glass drops to reflect the design of the chandelier in the room. This dining room also contained slumped glass platters with elephants impressed in them as well as painted canvas place mats with copies of some of the faces from the miniatures hung on the wall.
The Study or oriental room had gorgeous textiles including dragons inspired by a Chinese vase, butterflies from another vase, and an elephant doorstop taken from a wall sconce.
Our room had embroidered slippers, hand knitted argyle socks, a pair of gorgeous sea angels with machine embroidered gold wings and painted and embroidered clothes. There was a smaller tree with canvas sail covered with tiny stars in green and burgundy, felted fruit in a bowl and wonderful strawberries made by the junior guild members. Knitted camels and smaller embroidered ones continued this year's theme of Mr Johnstone's voyages and "We three Kings of Orient Are" on their travels
There were items representing presents being wrapped for Mr Johnstone's friends and others that he had unwrapped for himself. A silk embroidered waistcoat had Dorset buttons made by one of the girls in our group. A gold handbag embroidered with Japanese Irises and a compact to match were also a superb gift.
There were so many other pieces, it took 2 hours to visit the rooms and we could have stayed lots longer. Sadly no photos were allowed so I can't show you any of the splendour, but hopefully there will be some professionally taken ones later.
If you are anywhere near Melbourne (Australia) you should try and see this wonderful display before it finishes in February.
