• Learning

    Dyeing like my grandmother

    May 10, 2024 - By 

    My Nana Kit lived to be 102. In her last months of life she took to giving advice to all who she considered part of her family. My cousins received pearls of wisdom on managing a work/life balance; my sons were told how hard life can be, and sometimes just persevering is what is needed. I was told the formula for knitting a skirt and how to double warp a loom. My relationship with Nana was a close one, based largely on a shared love of textile art and the domestic sciences as she used to describe the more practical…

  • tools of the trade

    Make your mark

    March 28, 2024 - By 

    Like many quilters I have used – a lot – of different approaches to mark my work to help with the task of the moment. There is always new technology, the latest quilting gadget or tool to be used to mark appliqué, hand quilting lines or hand sewing guides on your fabric. For years people have been using the Frixion Erasable pens for their quilt marking needs (debates/reviews here, here and here). I have to admit that I haven’t gone down that pathway, the chance that the lines will appear at some inopportune time has always put me off using…

  • It is finished

    Adventures in bag making

    March 21, 2024 - By 

    We had a recent family wedding that necessitated a cross country road trip covering 2300km (1430 miles), it also needed a new bag. Like many things, it started with shoes. I have had thee cream floral satin shoes which I was given for my birthday in what has come to be known as the pandemic before times… like just before, I didn’t have a chance to wear them. So when presented with a wedding and an opportunity to frock up, I decided that this was the perfect time to wear them. But I didn’t have the right bag and shopping…

  • AccuQuilt - It is finished - Learning

    The Blue Thing (Intersections)

    December 20, 2023 - By 

    I was influenced. You know when you go to the shows, and watch the demonstrations and write the user case in your head to convince yourself that this is something that you “need”. It has turned out that this thing I bought myself (as a reward for something, could have been surviving a Monday), is worth every cent. I bought myself an AccuQuilt. I now have a collection of dies and a head full of ideas of how I want to use it, both for traditional reasons, but also to have a play with something new and play with colour…

  • Learning

    Workshops – Gloria Loughman

    September 6, 2023 - By 

    September 2023 brought the third (I think) of the workshops I have attended this year (the other two will come soon to here). It was with Australian contemporary landscape quilter Gloria Loughman. This was a two day class organised through Canberra Quilters Inc (my local guild), and was a very intense weekend filled with learning, trying new things, and really pushing what it is to me to be a quilter. Generally speaking, I am not an “art quilter”. It isn’t something I have ever thought of myself as, nor has it been something I have thought of myself being interested…

  • Musing about Quilting

    On Exhibitions

    June 1, 2023 - By 

    I have been quilting for decades, but it took me becoming actively involved in my local guild before I would even consider entering my work in an exhibition. The first “exhibition” I entered in was for the completed Down the Rabbit Hole quilt top, with Sarah Fielke. At the end of each year Sarah runs an online gallery-style exhibition for her completed block of the month quilts and quilt tops (from any year). I had managed to keep up with the block of the month journey (2017 must have been a quiet twelve months), so I entered the completed top…

  • It is finished

    100 Days; 100 Blocks (ish)

    April 18, 2023 - By 

    One calm, blue Canberra winter’s day I had an absolutely rubbish day at work (as one does), I came home and calmly decided to start a new quilt – to “help” sooth the stress of the day. Next morning, went to work and a colleague mentioned that I had seemed a little better than the day before – I thought it was funny when he responded with and eye roll, shake of the head and a mutter about dealing with things “exactly like his wife” (she is also a quilter). And that is how I came to start my Kinship:…

  • Musing about Quilting

    On Feedback

    March 27, 2023 - By 

    Over the past few years I have made more of an effort to put my work “out there”, to enter exhibitions or online hanging events, and one of the things I am finding interesting is my own reaction to feedback. I have sat on these thoughts for a while now, over a month, and seriously debated saying something about it. But better out than in. We all know the Quilt Police – or at least have heard of them. Quilt police aren’t exclusively young or old, judgemental comments know no age restriction, but they can be nasty and unwanted and…

  • Musing about Quilting

    What makes a good beginning?

    February 2, 2023 - By 

    One of the things I am working on at the moment is a beginners class. In some ways I am lucky, I am working to a framework provided to me as this is also a pathway to becoming an accredited teacher through my local guild, Canberra Quilters. But me being me, I have also been having a long term conversation about what should be in and out and the general vibe of beginners classes. Back in the olden days when I did my first sampler quilt (I think it was 1997 or 1998), the range of fabrics available in Australia…

  • Chester Criswell Quilt

    The (not) Wedding Quilt pt. 1

    February 21, 2020 - By 

    I have always loved antique quilts. Baltimore Quilts, Civil War Quilts, English, Australian, American, Welsh… it has never really mattered where they came from, it is the story that they hold in their stitching which has intrigued me and fascinated me. It is these quilts which drew me to quilting in the first place. But truth be told, I don’t make as many of them as I would like to. I have been looking closely at the Chester Criswell Quilt for a while now after seeing a modern interpretation of one made by Michelle Law (pictured below). I thought, in…