Our Ipswich Beanie will be unveiled today, which is rather exciting (and a wee bit scary). Our pal Greg from Tangible Media took these incredible photos. As it is off to live in an Art Gallery we had to write a rather official description which we thought we would share with you too:
As the beanie is off to live in an Art Gallery we had to write a rather official description which we thought we would share with you too:
MATERIALS
locally produced homespun wool
locally sourced miniature railway figurines
8 ply merino wool
wool roving
florists wire
The predominant theme garnered from the community suggestions was Ipswich's blue collar roots - mining, the railway and the railway workshops. We used this as our underlying motif in the benie and having both grown up in Ipswich there were a couple of other aspects we felt it was important to showcase namely family and the natural environment.
We felt it was imperative to the integrity of the project to source our materials either from Ipswich or from our own craft stashes. Locally spun and dyed wool was used to build the basic beanie shape, the varying colours representing the geological striation that underlies Ipswich. A miners lamp, worked in merino wool finishes off the base of the beanie and is a direct reference to our mining past. Tucked into the brim is a crocheted sprig of Plunkett Mallee - Ipswich's floral emblem.
The environment theme is continued on top of the beanie with a miniature needle felted parkland, created from a personal hoard of wool roving and figurines from local model makers shop Vogler's. A family poses for a portrait under a Jacaranda, an elderly couple sit on a park bench beneath the pines and take in the view and an 'our of towner' rests against a gum tree while his wife takes his photo. The scene is completed with a cheeky reference to Ipswich's love of fast cars and an homage to 'knock-off time' at the railway workshops.
