A Gift of Gratitude
There has never been a better time to reflect and remember the many men and women who have served us locally and overseas and those that continue to do so today. Let us take a moment to express our gratitude for their service.
The armed forces are responsible for their nation’s defense, for peacekeeping missions and are also called upon during times of disaster & crisis.
“To the men and women who protect, serve and keep us safe, we thank you!”
In a small way, our Wilcom staff and management would like to show
our appreciation in the best way we know how… Embroidery!
Aussie Hero Quilts have been around for 12 years, and we absolutely love the work they do in creating personalized quilts and laundry bags for our service men and women.
At Wilcom, we have set out to create our very own design and hope that someone would fall in love with it and make it theirs.
After speaking with the founder Jan-Maree Ball, the Wilcom design team started on our challenge to give back to our Defence Force. Remembering that laundry bags in the armed forces are all the same color, and it’s hard to pick yours amongst them all.
What shall we create?
Let’s start by designing something unique
for ANZAC day.
ANZAC is an acronym for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. A national day of remembrance in Australia and New Zealand.
Our digitizing team decides which stitch types would be best for this design, remembering that we want the laundry bag to be pliable and soft. The stitches need to be open yet still textural.
EmbroideryStudio has an array of creative stitch types that will work beautifully to showcase each design element.
Stitch types selected
The design itself is 45cm in height containing nearly 90,000 stitches, and because of the use of many creative, open stitch types, it only took 1 hour to stitch out.
For the sunset background, we used a combination of Accordion Spacing (Shading and Open Fill Element) and Florentine Effect (Curved Fills Element). Trapunto to force travel runs to the edges, so they cannot be seen.
The bright red poppy flowers are digitized with Ripple Stitch 3mm spacing (Spiral Fill Element), Double Square (Chenille Stitch) for the flower centre, and Stem Stitch for the leaves.
The latest Maze Fill Element is used for the flag, and the soldier silhouette ‘reversing and resting on arms’ in solid black tatami.
And finally, the golden scrolls hold the words ‘Lest we forget.’
The fabric's
The local fabric stores had an arrival of beautiful poppy flower fabric that is perfect to pair with organic calico and a royal blue polka dot ribbon.
The fabrics are washed to pre-shrink them, then cut to size, ready for the final embroidery. The AussieHeroQuilts laundry bag sewing instructions are followed to the letter…. AussieHeroQuilts Laundry Bag Instructions
The entire project comes together beautifully and is stamped with heartfelt thanks
These Wilcom designed and embroidered laundry bags are ready for its owners.
Thank you to the Defence Force men and women for your service.
See it in action
Contributions
If you would like to contribute in any way to Aussie Hero Quilts,
please go to aussieheroquilts.blogspot.com.au
or email: friendsofAHQ@gmail.com
Besides quilts and laundry bags, Aussie Hero Quilts
always need patches or blocks to make their personalized quilts.
We proudly develop all our products in Sydney, Australia, and today Wilcom is present in over 100 countries with products in over 14 languages and has a global community of more than 250,000 licensed customers.
A Wilcom customer shares their experience:
www.dandenong.embroidme.com.au
I feel very grateful to have received an Aussie Hero Quilt whilst I was in Afghanistan between 2017-2018, and again whilst I was redeployed in the Middle East – Kuwait and Iraq in 2019.
Both times, I felt immensely grateful to have received my Aussie Hero Quilts. I really value Jan-Maree Ball and her team for what they have done for us veterans. The efforts of the volunteers are incredible and these gifts mean so much. It still takes pride and place on my bed as a constant reminder of Australia’s appreciation.
Last year my deployment was for a local cause, it started with Australia’s bushfire season, in Operation Bushfire Assist and more recently for stage 4 lockdown during the Coronavirus pandemic, where I closed my EmbroidMe business for Operation COVID-19 Assist.
I feel honored and privileged to have received two hand-made quilts that kept me warm during my overseas deployments but emotionally means so much more.
A photo of Major Andrew Leong and the quilt he was gifted during his deployment in Afghanistan.
Read more about these crucial Operations>>
https://news.defence.gov.au/people/reservist-joins-fight-against-pandemic
