Over the River and Through the Woods

Again, I found the subtle colours in this quilt very restful. It was another block of the month. I worked on the embroidery at night and set up packs of the squares in the weekends. I remember rushing home in my lunch hour to stitch the squares. I could get two squares pieced in my lunch break. So it seemed to come together quite quickly . In my later quilts I would have been more tempted to quilt in the negative spaces of the embroidery but that step was still a way off at this stage

The quilt is machine pieced and quilted using very basic quilting repetitions.

Antique Sewing machines

I loved the antique colours in this quilt and stitching each antique sewing machine at night kept me calm from an exhausting day job. Today we would call it slow stitching or being in the moment but when I made this quilt it was just a relaxing way to spend each evening. I often marvel at how my instinctual draw to working on a quilt in the evening helped to balance my day work. In my book, “Life is a Journey” I call it one leg of a three legged stool: writing, quilting (art) and gardening.

I have seen other renditions of this quilt in a standard square block layout. I think the diagonal layout in the single Irish chain is very pleasing and I prefer it to the standard one. I don’t know that i would be so keen to join all those little squares today but the colours are still very appealing to me.

Love is . . .

This began as a block per month helping to keep me sane as I worked at the office during the day and stitched the redwork centres at night. I added the last three stitched panels ( designed by me) to increase the length of the quilt. So I was beginning to be more adventurous and not so by the book in may ways.

Not my favourite colour scheme but sometimes we need to push boundaries. The panels are hand embroidered, the piecing is done by machine and the quilting is one of my earlier attempts at machine quilting using stencils to mark out the design.

Country Was IN

9 Squares in a Country Tradition

Revisiting quilts I made such a long time ago is a trip down memory lane for me. This was the first block of the Month project I did. My work was very left brained (accounting/management) and drained me so much that I needed a creative outlet to re-energise. I found the block of the month options were a real plus. Each month a block with all the fabrics arrived in the mail so that I could focus on that block and work away to get it done before the next block arrived. It really helped. living remotely from any patchwork or fabric shop, getting the monthly block was also a bonus. You can learn the skills of accounting but never really enjoy the work and my quilting was the outlet I needed to keep going.

This quilt was a mixture of pieced and applique. I was still hand quilting at this stage.

I spent a year as an AFS scholar in Iowa so the American Country theme harked back to that time. While my style changed over the years, becoming less traditional, it is fun to look back on where my development began

My Stars

When photo image transfers (now called heat transfer) first became available, I was keen to try them out and the idea of this quilt was born. The quilt is completely self designed and begins with a black and white photo of my husband and I on our wedding day at the centre. a starting point. This is surrounded by a very busy patched inner section representing the business of our lives that were chaotic and yet had some order within the chaos. It is held in place by the thin red border. The white corner quilting gives the eye a resting place from the busyness in the centre (and provided me a place for more machine quilting practice). Each side shows photographs of my children growing up: my eldest daughter on the left, my son at the top and my youngest daughter on the right. The bottom has my Mum, my husband and the three children together. The white square represents our son who was still born and who we never had the opportunity to see. My garden surrounds them all