The early days: the beginnings of a textile art career
I grew up in a home where we were always making things. Mum made our clothes, our toys, our home decor, as well as many gifts for people dear to us. And I have early memories of working with her scraps in the sewing room.
I was never so good at playing with dolls, but loved making things for my sisters’ dolls. I recall starting a project where I would make Barbie dolls outfits, all the way through to the packaging!
When I was 12 years old, an older lady in our church gifted me her hand-crank sewing machine, as she’d heard that I love to sew. That’s the machine I used until my husband (then fiancée) bought me my first Bernina to sew my wedding dress with!
From dolls cloths I had moved on to sewing clothes for myself, as well as some quilting projects, among other creative experiments. We were avid visitors to the Albany Town library, and mum would always bring home stacks of non-fiction art, craft and design books to pore over. So inspiring!
In high school, the Albany Extravaganza opened down near Middleton Beach. This was a museum/gallery showcasing the collection of a local millionaire. I can still picture the eclectic display of drawings, vintage cars, Japanese kites, cermamics, paintings and…. textiles! Yes, this was where I first saw quilts as art, in the work of Wendy Lugg.
For Year 11 and 12, although I was focussed on maths and sciences, with a view to an engineering degree, I also took art. This proved to be such a welcome change of pace from all the maths and science homework. (I believe this also helped me to keep a good perspective during this time). I chose to focus on textiles, and spent a significant part of year 12 working on a quilt directly inspired by the work of Wendy Lugg. I studied images of her work to try to understand how she had created her fabric, and how she had drawn up her pattern, and then trying to apply some of that to my own work. The artwork that resulted is not my finest work, but definitely kickstarted this creative journey! I knew at that point that I definitely wanted to make more art quilts in my life!
I did go on to get that engineering degree, but came back to quiltmaking when I became a (stay-at-home) mother. When our little family of three moved to a remote town for five months, I used all my spare time to experiment further with printing and dyeing fabric. On returning to Perth, I entered QuiltWest, our state quilt show. This put me in touch with so many lovely quiltmakers. I was encouraged to join some of them at the Contemporary Quilt Group, for their monthly gatherings. For many years, this was the highlight of my month - learning about new ideas and techniques, being inspired by other textile artists, receiving feedback and encouragement on my own work. It was during that time that I really settled into my favoured piecework process. It was also at these meetings that I got to meet Wendy Lugg in real life - high school me would never have imagined that!
I thought i’d share this part of my story, as this creative journey really is about a lot of little creative steps taken over many years, and being blessed in unimaginable ways. I’ll share another post soon about some of my artworks and their interesting stories.