Sunburnt Textures 6 is on the verge of leaving  for exhibition in Golden Textures, at the Goldfields Art Gallery, Maryborough, Victoria, Australia, opening on 21st February, and where it will be showing for 6 weeks.  If you are passing through or live in that area, try to visit what sounds like a wonderful contemporary art quilt exhibition.

I really didn’t want the quilt to be folded for the long trip from Montevideo to Maryborough: I wanted it rolled so that after a week+ maybe 9 days in transit it would be ready to hang, falling perfectly flat without any creases.  For some time I’d thought ‘So I’ll wrap it around a pool noodle and pin in place’ .   Silly me though, I made it a bit too wide to squeeze into a Fedex mailing tube (1m) , and I didn’t want to cut some inches off the sides – which could have been done, of course, except that it was professionally photographed  back in November.   However, when I confirmed that it doesn’t have to be in Fedex packaging, I took myself to the neighbourhood hardware store the other day, and bought a suitable length of white polyvinyl pipe 15cm inside diameter, of the finest/lightest weight they had – plus a pair of ends/lids and some duct tape  they happened to have in white –  perfect.

Everything has been labelled with my name – the tube inside and out, the two lids, the quilt, the pool noodle and the grey cloth bag it goes in before being put in the tube. I took pics of the different stages of packing the quilt – collaged several and used this 4-in-1 pic to illustrate the sheet of clear, brief unpacking/repacking instructions I’m enclosing in the tube:

To unpack from mailing tube:

1. Remove and keep both white duct tape and the lid from one end of the polyvinyl pipe container – NB this tape can be re-used many times.
2. Remove grey cloth bag – named – please keep for re-use.
3. From the bag carefully remove the quilt – it has 3-d elements well sewn on, but, anyway, please just be careful!
4. Remove pins from along the edge – keep these for later by sticking them into the end of the noodle.
5. Unroll the quilt – notice it was very firmly rolled around the noodle inside the sleeve, with front side facing to the outside of the roll, and this needs to be done at the end of the exhibition, too.
6. Remove yellow pool noodle from inside the sleeve, and put the rest of the pins into it, place in the grey bag, and return all that packaging to polyvinyl pipe container; replace the lid onto the open end, and save it all for re-use at the end of the exhibition.

At the end of the exhibition:    

1. Take the lid off the container and remove the grey bag and the pool noodle with pins stored on it.
2. Insert the pool noodle into the sleeve – and secure by pressing pins through into the noodle every 15cm approx. along where the binding meets the orange.(upper left)
3. Roll the quilt as firmly/tightly as possible, with the front side facing to the outside of the roll.(upper right)
4. Secure the outer edge with the remaining pins pressed into the noodle. (lower left)
5. Slide the rolled quilt into the grey bag. (lower right)
6. Carefully push the rolled, bagged quilt into the polyvinyl pipe, being careful not to damage the 3-d elements – which you might need to press down a little to help them past the lip of the pipe without being pulled off/damaged.

Replace the lid and secure with the remaining duct tape

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I’m emailing a copy of the sheet to the gallery with tracking number for the consignment, and reasonably hopeful all packaging will be kept and used properly to send the quilt to a new owner or return it to me after the exhibition.