Susan Mathews

detail Nightshift

In 2011 while I was still living in Yarrawonga in NE Victoria, I was engaged as one of two textile artists to take part in the Wangaratta Textile Project, an Arts Victoria undertaking. The other artist was Andrea Komninos from Melbourne. We made site visits to the Bruck factory and Australian Country Spinners in Wangaratta and were given access to research that had been done re these industries and also to the textile collection of the Wangaratta Art Gallery, which is doing a great job of building on the textile history of their rural city. Our brief was that we could choose any aspect of textiles as they relate to Wangaratta that inspired us and that we were to make one piece of work, the progress of which we were to blog about on the Culture Victoria website. It was exciting seeing Andrea's work unfold and interesting to see her take on it all next to mine.( www.cv.vic.gov.au)

              I found the factory visits fascinating, the massive machinery with its constant motion and everything on such a grand scale. What also drew me in was learning about the vital role that the textile industry played in the development of Wangaratta with the associated influx of migrant workers and the consequent construction of housing and electricity infrastructure. Stories of life at the factories, which in bygone days operated 24 hours a day and which had actually housed workers and families on site, were intriguing. The factories were a place of work but also a social hub with various sporting clubs and activities and of course, the annual picnic complete with games and races. This was the soul of the industry and I found it fascinating.

              My own research revealed a number of friends who had family or other connections to the factories and also turned up a couple of very interesting connections to members of my own family, which, given the fact that I grew up in Melbourne, I found compelling. I was intrigued by a man called Stan Arms who had managed Bruck for about 20 years. While he was in charge, a house for visiting dignitaries and a few cottages designed by Robin Boyd were built, another gem I had not previously known of in Wangaratta.. Another discovery about Wangaratta was that it has a seriously good piano which is one of only two in the world and which is kept in its own climate controlled room. Apparently, Stan who was also a founding member of the Wangaratta Arts Council, was sent to Hamburg to order the piano. The other one is said to be suffering from altitude sickness in South America somewhere!.

              Australian Country Spinners started life as the Wangaratta Woollen Mills in the 1920s and to get it off the ground the public was invited to subscribe. To publicise this the daughters of the founder went flying in a bi-plane throwing out publicity leaflets over the area.

              All these things and more really resonated with me and when I had finished my piece for the Wangaratta Textile Project, I felt compelled to keep making more work around this topic. I completed a further five pieces of work and these were exhibited along with my piece for the Wamgaratta Textile Project as an exhibition titled "Fabrications" in the foyer of the Wangaratta Performing Art Centre, a space curated by the Wangaratta Art Gallery, from December 2011 until February 2012. Two of these pieces are now in the Wangaratta Art Gallery's textile collection and two more you see here.

NIGHT SHIFT

Procion dyeing; linocut printing; machine pieced; fused applique; free motion stitching using a domestic sewing machine.  Cotton fabric; procion dyes; water soluble block printing ink; polyester threads; wool.polyester batting

99 cm h x 145 cm w

2011

I was overawed by the massed wires of the jacquard looms in the Bruck factory which soared high into the air and had a grandness about them. I have tried to illustrate this in the largest section of this quilt with very close stitching which gives the sheer effect which was evident in the real thing. This theme is repeated on a smaller scale in a linocut print repeated in strips. On the far right side the herringbone pattern references the floor in part of the Bruck factory which was parquetry and therefore allowed for movement without cracking because of the heavy machinery. It was actually quite beautiful with the patina it had acquired through the years. A further linocut print echoes the constant circular motions seen in the factories, especially Australian Country Spinners. and also references the balls of wool which are the end product.there. Giant metal rollers hold warps in the Bruck factory and these inspired the applique shapes at the bottom of the piece which are linocut prints.

SHIFT 1

Procion dyeing; collagraph printing; breakdown silk screen printing; linocut printing; reverse applique; raw edge applique; free motion machine stitching using a domestic sewing machine. Cotton fabric; sheer polyester fabric; water soluble fabric printing ink; oil paint; polyester threads; wool/polyester batting.

93 cm h x 92 cm w

2011

I found the huge metal rollers that held the warps in the Bruck factory very interesting and in this piece of work I have tried to convey the continuum of the work and the relentless motion it creates through the repetition of the a design taken from the ends of the rollers. Reference to the woven fabric that is the end product is made in the yellow lines which represent the warps under tension which part to create a “shed” through which the weft passes at great speed.

The two narrow strips are linocut printed with a design which evolved from a photo I took at one of the factories of the time card holders and this references the contribution of all the many workers who make these processes happen.

detail shift 1

Sarah Louise Ricketts

Detail scraper

I am a fringe dweller, like most Australians. We hug the coast, living for the summer and the glow of the beach, the glint of sun on the surf's glass. I live on the urban fringe of the City of Melbourne, pulled by the excitement of people, the bright lights and energy of the crowd. Four million of us, seemingly huddling together against the vast red emptiness at our backs.

Like many Australians, I seldom see the real bones of the landscape of my country. Sometimes, perhaps, from the window of a car or a plane or on the screen of movie. Only very rarely do I look at it with my own eyes. And yet, like most Australians, I am filled with great love for this place. It is a love carried within, a part of us.

When I returned to live in the land of my birth, I understood that attachment to place – my profound love for the curving creek bed, the tree branch angled in welcome, the insolence of mountains – was part of me, no matter where I lived. I carried the hard-won love of the southern land within me to the Middle East and thence to the northern land of my birth. It informs all my work.

Statements about the Work for “Telling Stories”

For “Telling Stories,” I have selected work inspired by a crazy mountain-top race against time and nature through Jordan in the snow with my partner, Geoff Hicks, in 2007; one of my favourite memories of our life together. Geoff lived fast and died young - in 2009. We were building in Carlton at that time. I completed the works, incorporating a roof terrace from which the lights and skyscrapers (to use a now-antiquated but still marvellous term) of Melbourne can be touched. The second piece tells the story of this other life, lived in the realized architecture of a shared dream.

HOLY LAND: SNOW IN PETRA

Hand - stitched painted & felted fabric, deconstructed, reconstructed; coton, wool, silks
156 cm h  x 108 cm w

2007




Sketches, memories and photographs of a too brief but nonetheless compelling tour of Jordan provided the impetus for this work. 

Geoff and I drove to Petra along the mountain spine of the country, in January 2007, with snow dashing about the car and drifts pushed up into formidable banks, where snow had not been in recent memory. The road to Petra was closed behind us as night fell. We made a carefully mad dash toward the town.  The urge to celebrate this experience and to capture something of the haunting spiritual nature of the landscape proved irresistible. 

It is painted cotton wholecloth, felted, dissected and reassembled, stitched, refelted, repainted and assembled onto silk organza ground and frame.

This piece toured the US in 2010, as part of the World of Quilts competition and exhibition series.

detail Holy Land :Snow in Petra

SCRAPER

Nunofelted Fabrics; Hand-Stitching, Machine-Stitched, Silk Organza, Silk Tops, Fleece, Wool Yarns
140 cm h  x 105 cm w

2014

             THE STORY

When the boys and I first moved to Carlton, just on the edge of the city, there was nothing to the immediate south of us.  It did not take very long for a new apartment block to begin its rapid climb to soaring heights, changing our view from flat open blue to the many facets of golden windows.  

At first, I was quite resentful of this looming presence, whose appearance was unwelcome.  However, since it has been inhabited, the building has become some of a friend, a curious companion in the middle of the night when I look up and wonder whose windows are those, and why are they still up?

Surprisingly beautiful arrangements of light and colour are brought about by the random activity of human beings, giving the building life and filling me with a surreptitious delight.  The unwelcome intruder is an unexpected gift.

Detail Scraper

Lesley Goddard

I have always loved colour with its varying shades and the textures of materials. I find it difficult not to rub my hand across a piece of wood, a stone or glassware. Extremely difficult when visiting a gallery and I tend to walk with my hands in my pockets.

I love nature – animals, trees both the shapes and the movement of them in the breeze. The changing colours in the sky and the moods of the sea, the rocks with the water racing over them and the rugged faces of the rock faces are all things which add to my delight in a day.

While teaching in the infant grades I tried to enthuse the children by demonstrating and talking about these things so that they learnt to walk with their eyes open to the world around them and we looked at books to see how the illustrators had drawn a cat for example. I loved each new theme as I could cover my blackboard in chalk drawings and encouraged the children to use crayons and pencils so that they could blend their colours rather than use the flat texta colours. At this stage I would also make a windcheater and paint or sew a picture according to the current theme. Needless to say I ended up with a lot of windcheaters which eventually became a quilt of Australian animals.

Since retiring from teaching I have been able to indulge a wish to make a quilt after seeing one which was a palette of such vivid colours that you wanted to wrap yourself in it. I took myself of to classes; followed directions faithfully, branched out tried another; began my vivid quilt and I was hooked. I became part of a small group who enthused one another but I wanted more than just sewing other peoples designs. I wanted to add my own stamp on them by adding texture and using a variety of materials.

To accomplish this I attended workshops in Melbourne, Geelong, Horsham, Beaufort and our own groups within Warrnambool. In one group that I belong to we meet once a month and challenge ourselves to try to learn a new skill or use a new material. We often rely on magazines or books to do this.

At the moment I am attending TAFE and doing a second year of Machine Embroidery which is helping me to gain new techniques and confidence.

Alaska

Blue cotton material; photos of Alaska printed onto calico; hand pieced diamond shapes into long lines. Colour washed the quilt from light to dark representing sky to the depths of the ocean. Machine stitched the photos as if they were the diamond pieces and then machine embroidered the photos to add texture to the glaciers, seals. After discussion, regarding the designs to represent water, snowflakes and the sea, Yvonne McCrae machine quilted it for me.

136 x 211 cm

Began in October 2010 - finished 2011

While travelling I enjoy visiting patchwork and craft shops.  Most of the blue material was bought while travelling up the east coast and others were swapped with friends.  I completed a family history quilt but still had a lot of blue material.  

I had learnt about glaciers while studying geography in Form 6 and had always been keen to visit Alaska and so, on retirement, Alaska was included in a trip overseas.  I did not see a polar bear but I was inspired to try and make a quilt using some photos.

It took me several years before I started and a need to acquire some turquoise blues.  The size of the pieces and the decision to hand piece was because my husband had to go into hospital and I needed some handwork that I could do while I was with him.  The photos needed to remain as whole photos otherwise I lost too much of the photo when I cut them into diamond shapes - hence the stitching to make it look similar in design.  I enjoy machine embroidery so decided to add some texture to the photos.  My decision to have this quilt machine quilted by Yvonne was two-fold.  One, I had hand pieced it and secondly my machine needed servicing and I appreciated the discussion about the design and the completed job.

I am never completely sure how a quilt will look as I have an overall picture in my mind but as I do not work from a pattern, I depend upon the look of it as I lay it out and allow the colours and the design to influence my decisions.

Detail Alaska

LESLEY’S VERSION OF ‘DEAR JANE’

Red cotton material; calico - seed muslin. Machine stitched, hand stitched and appliqued blocks. Colour washed.

159 x 159 cm

Began in approximately 2005 - Restarted in 2011 Finished in 2012

 A "Dear Jane"Quilt has 225 patterns which date back to 1863 from the Jane A Stickie Quilt.  Her quilt has inspired countless people by the story behind the quilt and others by the mathematiacal geometric designs.  I decided to begin a quilt based on her idea hoping to improve my techniques and to become more precise in cutting and piecing.  Initiallly, a started with a friend and we used blocks from a book called "501 Quilt Blocks".  After many interruptions, I joined a group of women whe met once a month to wowrk on the various blocks from the Dear Jane book.  We would work on one or two blocks that night at the quilt shop and endeavour to make a few more before we met the following month.  Group participation led to much talking, and a further block quilt purely because we enjoyed the process and the social contact.   

   I had originally decided to make the blocks in red plus the calico and continued this when I joined the group.  I kept a sketch book of my blocks plus a detailed plaln of placement plus a chart of the pieces of material used in each block.  

 Rather than waste the original blocks I made, even though they were smaller, I added them to my design arouond the edges and colour washed the quilt.

This quilt is not an exact copy of a "Dear Jane"quilt nor is it as precise as quilter may wish but it was an achievement on my part and I learnt a lot in the process and met many new friends.

   

Dear Jane detail

Dont forget to check "older posts" below right for Robina Summers, Toni Warrell, Olga Walters, Anne Sushames and Fiona Wright.
                      

Robina Summers

Detail Vanishing?

I work  both as a photographer and a textile artist. I often find that in designing a photograph it will often help the design emerge for a quilt. On the other hand the design of a textile piece will often lead to a freer photograph. My work comes from the heart and, whether a photograph or textile piece, starts as a formal design determined by the theme of a particular exhibition. The meditative process of stitching stimulates my subconscious mind and will often dictate the emotional direction a work goes in. I find it impossible to make any work without an underlying statement about something I believe in. That doesn't meant it has to be serious, it can also be light hearted and fun. I continually find that that nothing is ever quite straightforward, visually or intellectually so that my art photographs are frequently manipulated to bend the straight lines and I find it physically impossible to sew a straight line. Quite a contrast, maybe even a reaction against the commercial world where I will pursue exacting reality in a photograph for a client.

I thoroughly enjoy workshops which I often find are a two-way inspiration.

My alter world is as a yarnbomber - or as some would prefer to call it - urban knitting, or even urban art installation. Its heartwarming fun facilitating community projects that soften cold hard reality with wool!

Along with Toni Warrell and Olga Walters I belong to the Star Quilters of Warrandyte where we make almost traditional quilts. We quilt for ourselves but like all quilting groups, big and small, the Stars devote time and materials to making quilts for others in need of comfort - from special care babies to fire and flood victims. The very first group quilt we made twenty years ago when we were beginners was for a charity auction. I never cease to be amazed at the generosity of all quilters everywhere- I guess its a pastime that easily lends itself to providing comfort for others.

When I have spare time (when????) I also blog about yarnbombing, quilting, people and many other things . Just google "Wild Yarns & Stuff"

Nostalgia

Silk organza & habutai, machine & hand embroidery, beads. Wool blanketing, eucalyptus, tea & kangaroo apple dye. Beads.

151 x 126 cm

We never fly when we work interstate. If we possibly can we drive.  We grew up in a time when that's what you did during the holidays.  We grew up loving the main streets in country towns.  They were thriving, busy  places.

Motels didnt exist.  We stayed in country pubs.  They had their own smell - even now, rarely, walking past an old building in the country, that smell will waft out of a doorway, creating a sense of loss for time past.  Shopping stopped at one oçlock on a Saturday, Sunday lunch wa a roast with family.  People grew wonderful flower and vegetable gardens, clothes dried on a Hill's Hoist, the baker delivered bread with a horse and cart and so did the milkman. 

Of course, these things happened in suburban Melbourne, but nothing in the the city remains to remind us of those childhood memories.  For no logical reason, country towns bring back romanticised memories of our lucky childhood and a desire to delve into times past, even times well before our own.

Se we drive and stop in modern motels, and then we walk, cameras in hand, obsessed by buildings of all ages.  Glimpses of many generations past - many have new uses  Lots of old banks are now restaurants, offices and medical rooms.  (I actually get really excited to see a very old bank building still in use as a bank).  In some towns, grand old emporiums lie abandoned.

Detail \Nostalgia

In some towns, grand old emporiums like abandoned.  That's very sad, what were they  like in their hey day - what sort of people shopped there, what did they buy, how did they live?  I could go on forever - instead, here's just a selection of memories from one drive north.

  I have arranged them inside the framework of a piece of ironwork on an old balcony in Armidale, New South Wales.  Look at them and let your imagination run riot about all the lives that have been led behind those doors and windows.  

EUCALYPTUS POLYANTHEMUS

Handwoven with synthetic thread and tissue organza, hand & machine stitching, beads, paint, wool blanketing, eucalyptus & tea dye.

88 cm w x 170 cm h

2014

When I was nineteen, I came back from 12 months overseas and started a course at RMIT.  Directly opposite was the then, National Gallery of Victoria.  When I should have been in the library fI spent many hours trawling the art.

On one of my first visits, I stumbled, almost literally, such was the effect, across Fred McCubbin's "The Pioneer".  Looking at it I could actually smell the bush I hadn't been in for probably eighteen months.  A visit to Eltham the following weekend made me realise just how very much I had missed it - odd as I always wanted to bean ïnner city girl""

When we married we lived in the inner city.  One day on a weekend escape to Warrandyte, we fell in love with a tree covered block and subsequently moved right into the bush.  It was a block covered in Eucalyptus Polyanthemus - red box.  Since then we have moved further into the bush.

Detail Eucalylptus Polyanthemus

When the "Red Box"winery opened I was asked to make a quilt celebrating the tree for the opening.  By chance I discovered a skeleton leaf on our drive - perfect for a design.  Since then I have reworked this quilt as my love affair with the red box has certainly not decreased.  It makes the most beautiful imprints on wool and imparts it's wonderful leaf smell into the fabric at the same time.  I am very happy for you to "touch and sniff" the woollen blanket layer.

VANISHING ?

Silk organza & habutai, machine & hand embroidery, beads. Wool blanketing, eucalyptus, tea & kangaroo apple dye. Beads.

151 x 126 cm

detail Vanishing?

2014 I love the bush.  The community I live in protects and cares for a small area of bush on the Yarra River on the outskirts of Melbourne.  Then there were those terrible firest.  Our community was by good fortune only, physically untouched.  But the whole of Melbourne felt the sadness.  Withing our community neighbours lost immediate family members, all of us lost friends and the romantic innocence of bush living vanished.

Its several years on now and its taken time for all of us to start to feel normal, some never will.

     

Despite that, the passion we all have for living in the bush has, if anything, increased - the burn areas and storm damage remind us of how fragile it can be.  We celebrate its existence all through the year.  There are now fears for its future - seed banks can disappear with fire and plants can vanish forever.  The earth is warmer now and is drier deep down because rain has trouble penetrating very ground making it more difficult for trees to cope.  And, there is less rain too.  I can see the bush has changed, our orchids are not as prolific and some of the trees are battling.  Near my house, beautiful candlebarks that are many decades old have inexplicably fallen over.

Were this bush to vanish, we would all be affected by its loss.  The woollen back of this quilt is covered in imprints of eucalypt leaves - please lift the delicate front to see what's underneath - even sniff the wool, its kept the smell of the leaves.

                        

                          

                             

      

Toni Warrell

Detail of Christmas Quilt

Escaping into my lovely big studio is my excuse for not doing housework. I love the first in all its forms and hate the other. I learnt embroidery from Mrs Bonnie Hurry, craft teacher at Ivanhoe Girls’Grammar School. Although we were given designs or themes for our work we were never allowed to copy and always had to create our own.. To this day I look at a design or pattern that appeals to to me for inspiration and then cant help but plan how to change it.

I started quilting seriously when I was running our school parents craft group. I loved working out the patterns, colours and the quantities of fabric needed. I enjoy the satisfaction of solving new design challenges and helping my quilting friends sole theirs. 

Christmas Quilt

All cotton, pieced and appliqued, machine quilted

270 cm square

2014

I discovered a pattern by Barb Adams of Blackbird Designs for a much smaller quilt. When in doubt I always seem to go bigger. All my quilts are large enough to be used on beds so inevitably this quilt ended up a king size.It was a very satisfying way to use some of my vast Christmas fabric stash.

Windmills

 All cotton, pieced and quilted by machine

190 cm h x 172 cm w

2014

I was able to get a close up of Windmills, a full size quilt will appear on this page soon as well. ( Its fortunate that Toni is such a good friend so I know she wont mind)

I love the challenge of working different (and potentially better) ways to piece traditional patchwork blocks. This pieced pattern resulted from playing around and recutting hexagons. The resulting windmills look very complicated but are easy to join, making it a very enjoyable class to teach. Student are always thrilled with it.                                 

Olga Walters

I emigrated with my family in 1957 from the Netherlands; we lived in Taree in New South Wales, where I very quickly realised at the tender age of seven that life would be different from then on.

The terrain in the open scrubby areas of coastal New South Wales, was so vastly different from what I had known, although I was looking at it with young eyes, I still did not fail to notice this.

Having always loved drawing and painting, I very quickly found my sketchpad was filling up (usually in preference to doing my homework!)

As an adult, my working life seemed disconnected to my creativity, which was always on the go in my spare time.

Flying for TAA as a hostie gave me the opportunity to see parts of Australia that I had not dreamt I would be able to visit and spend time in. Based in Brisbane the flights I crewed were usually into outback Queensland on smaller aircraft and of course coastal stops of the East Coast of Australia, from Melbourne right up to Cairns.

Nowadays I mostly capture my inspiration using photography quite often at my sister's farm at Smeaton near Ballarat. The surrounding bushland provides me with endless possibilities.

My love of thread and cloth with their tactile qualty seemed to be a natural progression from the sketches and paintings that I had made previously.

I love to start with black cloth, taking the colour out with a discharge agent and then over-dyeing the same cloth to bring out the patterns from foliage which has been laid down onto it. I then spend many hours building up textures using torn up pieces of cloth. The next step is to stitch into these collages over and over to build up the textures. This is rather like drawing back into a painting.

ENDLESS HORIZONS

Discharged cotton fabrics, fused raw-edge collage technique, synthetic threads, free-motion embroidered.

47 cm h x 115 cm w

2010

 The dramatic horizon line against the mountains in the distance were stitched using Australian landscape colours.  I draw using a multitude of embroidery threads in my sewing machine.

EARTH WRAP

Discharged cotton fabrics, piecing technique, synthetic threads, free-motion embroidered

 181 cm h x 141 cm w

2003 

 As an artist working from nature, I seek to interpret dramatic elements from the complex, yet transient life withing the Australian forest.

On the ground over time soft humus forms on the forest floor, creating a soft cradle for the re-generation of plant and animal life. 

          

LEAF LITTER

Discharged and overdyed cotton fabrics, fused raw-edge collage technique, synthetic threads, free-motion embroidered.
90cm h x 44cm w
2013

The forest floor covered with leaves creates interesting colours, patterns and textures. The intensely beautiful world provides me with a visual feast of textures and colours to create cloth for my art quilts.

WINGED FRENZY 

Discharged and overdyed cotton fabrics, fused raw-edge collage technique, synthetic threads, free-motion embroidered.119 cm h x 92 cm w2004

I wanted to capture the frenetic energy of our Australian magpie. These fascinating birds are notorious for swooping down onto unsuspecting passers-by during their nesting season.  The play of light, the movement of air and the call of birds are all woven into these surfaces.   

               

Anne Sushames

detail Fragrant Threadbare Stars

I have come from a sewing background and have always sewn for as long as I can remember. As a child I had a toy sewing machine that sewed a chain stitch that was quite functional which I used to make dolls clothes. I soon graduated to sewing on Mum’s treadle and made lots of dolls clothes for my younger sisters and later my own clothes.

My first introduction to patchwork was through the story of Milly Molly Mandy who made a patchwork tea cosy. I could clearly see in my imagination this crazy patchwork tea cosy and wanted to emulate it, although I never did.

My aunt was a trained home economics teacher and made hexagon quilts from dressmaking scraps in the 1960’s. When I was in early high school I made my first patchwork from ~4” squares of dressmaking scraps sewn together and lined as in the early coverlets. I used this as a bedspread while at university. I subsequently made a bedspread from left over curtain material patched together with coordinating gabardine, again a coverlet not quilted.

When pregnant with my first son I made my first hexagon coverlet as a cot cover again from dressmaking scraps. Several hexagon quilts later I found patchwork and quilting groups and attended my first quilt retreat in 1986 at Minden in Queensland (I lived in Brisbane at that time) where I discovered to my delight a whole world of other people who loved to sew and quilt. To me the social aspect of quilting is what I enjoy most, sharing and meeting with other quilters.

Today I am a bit of a patchwork junkie, regularly attending groups from Victorian Quilters, a state wide body to several smaller groups meeting in each others houses so sew and share the ups and downs of our lives.

Up until 2008 I hand quilted all of my quilts. I really enjoy the quilting process which adds another dimension to the patchwork giving it extra vibrancy. In 2008 I purchased a longarm machine and now have the pleasure of working on lots of different quilt tops finishing them for other people and speeding up the quilting process considerably. I still enjoy hand quilting but machine quilting gives a different look and finish that is achieved much more efficiently.

Most of my quilts are traditional but I enjoy choosing my own fabrics and changing things slightly to make them my own. I have always been driven to keep going to “see how it looks” and to start new projects. Like many quilters I always have lots of UFO’s (Unfinished Objects) or PHD’s (Projects Half Done) as I can’t resist starting another new quilt.

This year I have become involved in the Snuggly Quilt program organised through Victorian Quilters and the Wrapped in Love program at the Royal Children’s Hospital where we make and distribute quilts to sick children. I enjoy the process of making quilts as much as the end result. It is so rewarding to be able to give quilts to children who are in such a vulnerable situation and experience the delight they can give to children and parents alike.    

Fragrant Threadbare Stars

Hand pieced and hand quilted Engllish paper piecing

177cm w x 191 cm h

2011

This quilt was made in response to a challenge issued by Victorian Quilters in 2011 to make a quilt based on a quilt featured in Annette Gero’s book Fabric of Society about Australia’s Quilt Heritage form Convict Times to1960.

I chose to base my quilt on Frederica’ Josephson’s Quilt of Diamonds and Hexagons. At the time I did not own a copy of the book and drew up the pattern from a picture I had in an earlier book of Annette Gero’s “Historic Australian Quilts” and used templates I had to hand piece my quilt over papers using the English Paper Piecing method. The first contact with quilting I had was my aunt making a hexagon quilt back in the 1960’s and I made a hexagon coverlets for my first baby back in 1979, so making this quilt was a return to my quilting roots. I used to hand quilt all my quilts but since purchasing a longarm machine had done very little hand quilting, but I felt that this quilt deserved to be hand quilted in keeping with the times although the original quilt was a coverlet and not quilted.

I used fabrics purchased from The Fragrant Cottage in Warrnambool and Threadbear in Castlemaine with vouchers I had won at a previous Victorian Quilters Showcase Exhibition, hence the name Fragrant Threadbear Stars.  

DOLLS'S BED QUILT

English paper pieced hexagons, hand pieced and hand quilted Liberty tana lawn cotton with pellon wadding

51 cm h x 44.5  cm h

2012

I made this quilt in 2012 when I gained custody of a family heirloom doll’s bed that had belonged to my grandmother. When the bed came to me it had no bedding so I made a mattress, sheets and pillow with pillowcase and of course there had to be a quilt.

I agonised for some time over a suitable pattern but when a friend suggested a miniature hexagon quilt I knew that it would be just right. I used liberty fabrics and pellon for batting. Again hand quilting seemed appropriate for this small project. My granddaughters now enjoy playing with this remarkable doll’s bed.

detail Fragrant Threadbare Stars