CRAFTY Fremantle residents have joined an anti-domestic violence campaign which will see an entire Italian piazza covered in patchwork quilts in November.

Cristina Begni, co-founder of Italy’s Viva Vittoria, has been holidaying in Fremantle and recently dropped into local jeweller and craftsperson Jasmine Jones’s Cafe Crochet. Ms Begni told the group about a project Viva’s working on to cover her hometown Brescia’s Piazza Vittoria with a huge quilt on November 25, the international day for the elimination of violence against women.

Apart from raising awareness of the issue, patches from the quilt will be auctioned off during the event to help pay for a community safe house. The mayor of the town has given the project his blessing, with his council donating a shopfront for the auction and giving the women the piazza to use for free.

• Cristina Begni, Jasmine Jones and Kylie Wheatley alongside some of the women involved with a new family violence awareness project.

Ms Jones was sold on the idea and her class has been putting together their own patches which will be donated to the Italian group.

“I was very compelled by the nature of the Viva Vittoria project, and can envisage its global potential in giving women a voice against violence,” Ms Jones says. “Silence is after all the great enabler of abuse.”

Ms Jones told the Herald that she hopes to run a Viva Vittoria for Fremantle next year.

Kylie Wheatley, founder of the Nectar Festival for women, is also on board, working with the Fremantle Foundation and Ms Jones.

“I think we all realised that there was potential with this project for it to have an impact on not only this amazing event in Italy, but this was something we could replicate in Fremantle,” she says.

The women are encouraging members of the community to donate knitted or crocheted squares. They can be delivered to Bibi Vintage and Fairtrade or Yarns on Collie. For more information see Viva Vittoria on Facebook.

by BRITTANY HANCOCK