Quilt Finish – Neon Daze

Sit back because I’m about to tell you a Molli Sparkles story that I didn’t even know was in me. It’s about the music of cultural icon, Dannii Minogue. Let me set the scene. I was twenty years old, and had been completing my university degree at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. In the early months of 2002, I had the opportunity to come to Sydney, Australia for six months as part of my uni’s study abroad program. Upon arrival to Sydney airport with a single suitcase in tow, I met up with a new Australian friend I had only ever chatted to on the Internet! Listen. Would I let my own children do this today? Hell to the no. But, I was young, naive, and living my best life! Hey, So What, I mean, it gets worse before it gets better, but stay with me.

This new friend then drove me from Sydney airport to his house in Goulburn, NSW where no one knew where I was, I had no mobile phone, no other contacts in Australia, and uni enrolment wasn’t for like another month. Okay, I literally could have disappeared off the face of the planet at this stage, but thankfully, said friend turned out not to be a Creep and didn’t murder me. Even better, he turned out to be a bit of a pop-bitch like myself. And this is the point of the story, where my life changed forever.

You see, while I was staying at his place, he took me along to a gay, bush dance party at a local Goulburn nightly hot spot. For those non-Australians, this is like a rural dance party for those living outside of the big capital cities. Goulburn now has a population of 24,000, but services other area towns … anyway, I digress. So remember, this is like my second day in Australia, I’m with a stranger, I’m Nervous, I’m twenty years old, innocent as all-get out, bit of a goody two-shoes, unable to even buy a drink in the U.S. Now here I am walking into a bar where nobody knows anything about me, the legal drinking age is 18, and it’s full of gay Australian cowboys. :::looks around:::

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And I will never forget this moment, because you know what I did? I looked at my friend and asked, through smoke and dark, strobing neon lights, “Oh my god, what is this song!?” To which he replied, “This is Dannii Minogue’s new one, Who Do You Love Now?” I didn’t know who Dannii was, (let alone a Minogue) but it felt like my whole body was suddenly alive with the beat pulsing through me, and her haunting vocal repeating, It’s hard to break a habit, get lost inside it, who do you love now? We rushed onto the dance floor, and this became the first song I ever danced to in Australia. It left me sweaty, horny, and craving more.

From there, it’s really just been a long, long love affair with the Mighty Fine dance music of Dannii Minogue. While I’ve had to go back and educate myself on the classics, I’ve still been able to enjoy all of her releases in real time since that day. For the Record, there have been some bops! Let me tell you, nothing slaps harder than her 2003 magnum opus, Neon Nights. Upon its release, I had returned to Philadelphia to finish my degree, but you know I was rocking out in my dorm room every night to classics like I Begin To Wonder, Put the Needle On It (<– I mean, c’mon!), and Don’t Wanna Lose This Groove (a mashup of her song, Don’t Wanna Lose This Feeling and Madonna’s classic, Get Into the Groove).

So it’s been nearly twenty years of Dannii-love. Flash forward to A Piece of Time in 2019, and once again I’ve got the Neon Nights album blasting away in my sewing studio. I was like, I should make a quilt about this. Right? Right. So I start pulling fabrics from my stash that take the saturation levels up to a 100%, you know, the glow-in-the-dark kind. At the same time, I wanted to ensure there were a mixed bag of small to large scale prints, and honey, I ain’t afraid of a novelty print. You don’t get Mystified by Neon Nights, and not throw in some sunglasses and cassette tapes!

I decided to revisit my original Mood Ring Tutorial, but do it in a completely fresh way. No solids. No symmetry. Come and Get It, baby! I wanted to feel the stepping pulsations of the bodies, of the neon lights, the intensity of the rush from the nothingness outside that dance club door to the bombastic energy that engulfed me as I was possessed onto the dance floor. I purposefully didn’t use black as the neutral because I knew It Won’t Work Out. I wanted to ensure that contrast and hard break was present. While this quilt was originally inspired by and titled, Neon Nights, upon finishing, it became Neon Daze, as that was the encapsulated feeling.

I relied heavily on my design wall to layout these blocks pre-assembly. The white fabric is Carolyn Friedlander’s Crosshatch to Push the negative space with additional depth. The colours are bleeding into the white space, much like how the original song, album, and Dannii herself infiltrated my unsuspecting life. The longarm quilting was completed by fan favourite, Leanne Harvey of Mount Vincent Quilts. She used this jarring, geometric pattern that is in keeping with the frenetic, electro-pop energy of the dance music this quilt is about. The blue thread allows the disparate pieces to be connected across the quilt, and I couldn’t have asked for anything better.

Okay, we have to talk about the binding for a hot minute. Originally, I was at odds on how to finish the piece off. A single fabric just didn’t seem right, and it wasn’t until my recent Rainbow Mountains Quilt finish that I had the insight to use all the fabrics for binding this quilt. So that’s what I did! I collected every scrap, big and small, and sewed them all together On the Loop. For those quilters wondering, on the back, that’s Alexander Henry’s Tag You’re It fabric combined with Kona Cerise. Neon Nights, indeed!

The original intention for this quilt’s photo shoot was to Vibe On with the night club feel, but you know, COVID. So on a recent walk around the neighbourhood, I couldn’t pass up noticing the jacaranda trees dropping their flowers around me. They were everywhere, and I was scooping them up like hot men on a dance floor! Ow! There were definitely randoms walking by and watching my crazy unfold, but as you can probably tell from this long-winded tale, I’m impervious to crazy! In fact, bring it on, because Molli Sparkles has quite a few further tales to tell!

As an aside, this quilt’s destiny, is to wind up in the hands’ of the incomparable, Dannii Minogue. I just don’t think it would be right for anyone else to have it. I’m making a few inroads to that goal, but regardless, I’ll always believe that this woman made music that set me free. Dannii changed my life for the better, and this quilt is a Hide and Seek metaphor for the life that I was meant to live. Thank you to that original Goulburn friend, Dannii Minogue, and most of all the music.

Title: Neon Daze
Size: 44″ x 60″
Pattern: A twist on my Molli Sparkles Mood Ring tutorial
Fabric: Molli Sparkles curated bundle
Piecing: Machine stitched on Juki TL-98P with Aurifil 50wt, 2024 White
Quilting: Long arm quilting, by Mount Vincent Quilts
Binding: Hand-stitched with Aurifil 50wt, 2024 White
Backing: Alexander Henry Tag You’re It and Kona Cerise
Timing: July 2019 – November 2021
Favourite Part: Fulfilling its destiny.