By Mikayla van Loon
Montrose resident Jillian Smith has two passions in life – being creative and teaching children – now those hobbies have been recognised with an Order of Australia Medal as part of the Queen’s Birthday honours.
Completely overcome with surprise for the honour, Mrs Smith said “I’m only doing what I love to do.”
Taking her two passions of working with children and sewing, Mrs Smith has been giving back to her local and national community for decades.
Attempting to retire from a career as a primary school teacher in 2011, Mrs Smith was looking for opportunities to put her skills in sewing and quilting to good use.
“I had taken up quilting earlier on and fell in love with it…I discovered this group called Aussie Hero Quilts and I did a lot of quilts for them initially,” she said.
With an entire book of photographs and letters from the men and women who received a quilt from Mrs Smith at the time of Australia’s involvement in Afghanistan in 2014 and 2015, she said she sometimes goes back to reflect on the impact she hopes she had on those soldiers’ lives during a really difficult time.
From there her quilting for a cause snowballed.
“I also got involved with a few incidental things like there was a really big bushfire in the Blue Mountains and people had just lost everything. One of the quilt shops that I knew of up there was collecting quilts, so I made quilts and I sent them to the quilt shop,” Mrs Smith said.
Knowing the care she takes in each design, Mrs Smith has been asked a few times to use the clothing of someone’s deceased child to make a quilt as a keepsake.
“It’s so emotional but at the same time, it’s an absolute privilege to be asked to do that,” she said.
Each quilt has a purpose and Mrs Smith said she never gets attached to the quilt itself because she knows it is going to someone who needs it at that moment in time, whether it be for an orphanage in Romania or a preemie baby that has reached its 100th day in hospital.
Most recently Mrs Smith has joined the Ringwood based BJ Quilters, where a group of women sew quilts, drainage bags and cushions for women undergoing breast cancer treatment at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre.
That has also branched into helping women who are escaping family violence and have retreated to a refuge.
“They often come with nothing but the clothes on their back but every bed in that place has a quilt on it. When they leave, they can take their quilt with them.
“A lot of the time you don’t know anything but it doesn’t matter because in yourself, you know that wherever it goes and whatever they use it for it’s going to be what they need at that particular time in their life.
“And it was what I needed in that particular time in my life when I was making it because it either took me out of myself or I was coping with Covid lockdowns.”
Supporting children in some of the most challenging times of their lives has also been a focus for Mrs Smith, where she sews capes to help young kids be brave while they undergo chemotherapy treatment in hospital.
“In April, they sent out over 800 capes. They had just over 850 come in from across the country but you can’t get your head around the fact that there’s 800 little chickens in one month across the country that need a little bit of help being brave.
“When I work with kids, I just think that can’t be right but it is and so once again, it’s an absolute joy.”
Quilting gives Mrs Smith an outlet, one where she can be creative but also impact someone else’s life to bring them comfort, love and care all woven together in brightly coloured shapes and patterns.
“The ability to just look at something and think I can make that and then use your own colour sense because I like bright jewelled colours. I love them. I think they’re amazing. And to be able to do that is incredible.”
Mrs Smith’s first passion however, has always been educating children, something she tried to retire from but said “I came back to the fact that I missed the kids dreadfully.”
“The joy of teaching those little ones how to read and write is just, there’s nothing that beats it.”
She has now returned to four and a half days of teaching as a learning aid at Mooroolbark East Primary School, where she previously spent 15 years in the Prep classroom, to work one-on-one with the students needing that little bit of extra support.
“I started teacher’s college in 1970 and it’s now 2022 and I’m still in education. There’s not a day that I don’t think how lucky I am to be able to do it. It’s just an absolute privilege to help these little chickens and watch the light go on.”
Although living a busy life between work, quilting and a new grandchild she adores, Mrs Smith said “it keeps me going. These things are what make life worthwhile.”
Mrs Smith said her passion for quilting and teaching are fairly equal “but they come from a different place.”
“Quilting comes from a personal space, where I just love working with the fabric and it’s that journey of seeing a design or making up your own design and then working it out and putting it together.
“With teaching, it’s more because I have a real belief that teachers aren’t trained, teachers are born and you’re either a good teacher or you’re not a good teacher.
“So it’s that wanting to make it better for a kid and that you can make a difference in these children’s lives by giving of yourself.”
Receiving the OAM, Mrs Smith said it is lovely to think one of her peers feels as though her contribution is worth this acknowledgement.
“I want it to be an acknowledgement of all of the other people that are doing the same thing that I’m doing. I find it incongruous that I’m the one who got the recognition and I feel there are so many others who deserve it so much more.”
