Traditional-Style Sewing Accessories

Do you teach your skills to others? I have been teaching my own original quilt designs for the past 14 years at various shops around Sydney. My two sons are now old enough to look after themselves (for short periods!), so I’m now able to travel a bit further to teach. I have enjoyed teaching at AQC, in Melbourne, and the SA Quilt Encounter, in Adelaide, as well as visiting Victor Harbor, Wodonga and Broken Hill.

Does your teaching help build crafting communities? In January this year, I travelled to Palmerston North, in New Zealand, to teach at the 2015 NZ Quilt Symposium. This was a fabulous experience, being part of a large contingent of tutors who taught a huge number of enthusiastic quilters. I am finding wherever I go, quilters speak the same language and share that love of buying and sharing great fabric, cutting it up and assembling it again into a work of art. Quilters instantly have a connection to each other than transcends age, culture and status.

What’s your studio space like? I have a very small house with a confined sewing space – not a studio at all. I’m in the middle of all family activity, but this allows me to be cooking dinner, with the washing machine going, while I quickly fussy cut a few hexagons. Yes, my life is busy and a bit crazy!

Do you like to work on lots of projects at once? I used to work on more embroidery projects, especially cross stitch, but now I only have time for patchwork. I usually have at least one major machine-pieced project on the go and several hand-appliqué projects in various stages of development. I am very busy with constant pending deadlines for quilt shows and magazine commissions.

Does technology plan a part in your design process? I love to access the computer, especially to search images of historic designs: stained glass, mosaic tiles, architecture etc. I often use historic designs as inspiration for a starting point for a new quilt. I find that, once I begin, further inspiration comes and the quilt will tell me what it needs next. I also use my Electric Quilt 7 software program to check that measurements will work and arrange colour placement.

Your Jane Austen series has been a great success, hasn’t it? My most successful venture has been my Jane Austen Quilt Collection – so far, a series of seven completed quilts named after the houses and places featured in Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice. These quilts have a definite antique flavour and feature lots of hand appliqué and English paper piecing. They have been hugely popular with my students and have afforded me many opportunities to travel and share my love of appliqué, particularly hexagons. In September, I travelled to the United Kingdom to accompany a tour based in Bath - called ‘The Life and Times of Jane Austen’and organised by Whitecroft Traditional Tours. A number of my students came on the trip. Very exciting. Another recent venture has been to offer my ‘Pemberley’ quilt pattern for sale through Riley Blake fabrics. Sue Daley has designed a new range of fabric called ‘Pemberley: In the Era of Jane’ for Penny Rose fabrics, which will be launched in May and available in Australia around October. I’m really looking forward to seeing this beautiful fabric on the shelf.

Do you take any stitching with you when you travel? I do take my hand sewing while travelling, but I haven’t perfected doing hexagons on the plane yet!