When a new neighour took me along to the local guild, ACQ, one night early in 1988, I was immediately hooked, and my interest in fabric and stitch turned from creative embroidery to traditional American patchwork and quilting. I took some construction classes, joined a bee, and made one Flying Geese pattern wall quilt. This southwestern (US) colour palette for home decor was in vogue at the time 🙂

Within the year, though, I’d begun making my own original design art quilts:

The bee I joined called themselves the Friday Morning Block Party, which was, at the name suggests, quite traditional, but it soon became clear they were a very creative group, and some were just starting to explore non-traditional quiltmaking. By the time I left Denver six years later to return to Australia (1994) we’d renamed ourselves The Over The Edge Quilters; Sherry and Barb had written and published a fun book on quilting bees; lawyer Janet Jo had a nice number lecturing groups on copyright issues, and had began selling her hand dyed fabrics; two more of the group had become accredited quilt judges, and another helped start a critique and ideas group for several of us seriously exploring art quilts andgetting into art quilt sections of quilt guild shows – I made Quilt National’03. They were the hardest group I’ve ever had to leave anywhere.

But of course, when change happens there are always several diehards who resist changing anything. I remember back in the late 90s at a West Australian Quilt Guild meeting, a traditional quilter sniffily informed me that her quilts were always totally hand pieced and quilted, and always used only 100% cotton fabric and thread… as if this made her work somehow better. The other side of that coin is, though, that I’ve also heard barely concealed disdain in an art quilt maker’s comment about those who take great pleasure in carefully following published patterns.

Tradition is a two sided coin.  One side of that is the very human wish to preserve the skills and knowledge from the past for future generations, and I’m quite sure quilt making skills and traditions are being well preserved by traditional quilt guilds today.  When I became hooked, the rotary cutter and cutting mat were still pretty new, and hand piecing was being largely replaced by machine sewing. Other tools had appeared, too – including a variety of plastic rulers and templates, curved safety pins, and of course long arm quilting machines.

In my field of quilted textile art, techniques have also seen a lot of change, including foundation piecing, stack and whack©, image transfer technology, and online workshops of all kinds, both paid and free.  We can shop for fabrics, notions and books on-line, and traditionalists can still get the books with traditional patterns and instructions in magazines and books from shops and libraries. But the biggest change is how much informational material is available online, much of it free of cost through YouTube, Pinterest, artists’, teachers’ and groups’ websites, digital newsletters and blogs. Another important thing about techniques in contemporary fibreart is that previously clearly defined textile areas like beading, knitting, crochet, surface embroidery, lace making, quilting, patchwork and more, are all now being freely borrowed by creative fibreart people and used in combinations not previously imagined.

As long as modern fibreartists continue to tinker with the traditional crafts, the overlapping fuzziness at the edges of individual textile arts will continue to further stimulate creativity. 

I’ve always found interest in the processes that produce landforms on different kinds of material, so much so that I studied geomorphology at university, so not surprising perhaps that the Earth’s surface has influenced my art. In the 80s, I was definitely aware of being inspired by the shapes, lines, colours, and textures of Landscape; but I wasn’t thinking much about my emotional reactions to it.

This poor quality image is of a 1995 work, “Pahoehoe 1” and there are several other works from that time based on these landforms.

I addition to the those two, there are others prompted by an experience while I was an artist in residence in Katherine NT, one very hot afternoon hiking up a dry river bed of rounded stones to a bush picnic spot. I did several based on that memory, including Sunburnt Fragments and Afterglow, below:

I’ve done lots of creating with these shapes in 2D, but as my regular readers will know, I am increasingly interested in 3D soft sculptural forms, including Growth, which will be showing in my upcoming exhibition in Madonado Uruguay opening January 2nd.

In a recent sunday morning browse on Pinterest, I came across a wonderful sculptural fibre piece, and followed the link to fibre artist Tininha Silva’s website . Her clear, brief statements really resonated with my own inspiration from organic patterns in and on the Earth’s surface.

The longer I spend making fibre art, the less surprised I am to discover links back to my my past, like threads running through the different parts of my life.

Which brings me to my recent puffs craze. While finishing off the backs of the latest orange, red and pink puffs, I’m continuing exploratory sample making, as shown in several previous posts:

I have several metres of waxed polyester thread/cords in appropriate toning colours that I’d like to loop about and have hanging down, but wandering stings of glass beads are a thing I like at the moment, too, as they add to the organic look. Yesterday I found some vibrant pink rattail cord and some waxed polyester ones (dull almost burnt orange, hot pink and a rich red) so I’ll be adding something else 3D to this piece – strings of beads, wisps of organza or looped and hanging threads, and maybe all three… and just as I’ve done for the others, I’ll finish it with hanging loops on the back or mount it on an artist canvas, giving the choice to display it horizontally or vertically.

I see Landscape as a metaphor for a Life, in which a road or path crossing it symbolises directions taken due to decisons made, actions taken, and obstacles overcome.

The eternal cycle of erosion by wind, water and temperature change acting on the earth’s surface wears gradually landform material down into rocks and finer particles, and transports that away to deposit it somewhere else. Day by day, over time mountains are steadily worn down, cliffs crack and eventually crumble, rivers carve valleys across flood plains, glaciers grind away valley rock walls leaving mounds of material as they retreat, and waves wash sand back and forth along coasts by way of tidal rhythms and ocean currents, so that beach shapes and profiles are always changing. If we step onto it for a daily walk, our local beach looks much the same until an extremely high tide or unusually strong waves arrive. In a violent storm like the recent hurricane Melissa in the Caribbean, both erosion and deposition by wind and water were massive and rapid, so the devastating results were immediately obvious after the storm cleared. And of course, seismic activities including earthquakes and volcano eruptions bring dramatic and sudden change.

In a Life, the normal processes of birth and growth to maturity followed by death normally bring signs of gradual aging that we don’t notice every day if we’re with someone frquently; we do notice them at family events, meeting up with an old school friend, or looking back through the photo albums. And in Life, too, major events like births, deaths, marriages, divorce, serious medical events, a big lottery win, an outbreak of war, a housefire and more, can produce noticeable changes in a person’s appearance and personality.

Gradual and sudden events shape the future appearances of both Landscapes and Lives.

For some time I’ve realised that every time in my life I’ve had a major geographical relocation due to geologist husband Mike’s job, some kind of change has appeared in my art, and there are several clear periods of identifiable changes:

• In 1969 we married and moved from our home state to Western Australia where the nickel exploration and mining boom was underway. The sewing, knitting and crochet I did in those years was dominated by household sewing and garment making for the little Schwabes who arrived in this time.
• In 1975 we relocated to Darwin and the Northern Territory. During our first Wet Season up there, a new friend suggested reciprocal childminding for her to attend a weekly craft class, offering to mind our two in return, as it was important to get ourselves out of the house doing some activity to stave off Wet Season blues, so I enrolled for a class in Creative Embroidery which changed my life, and soon I was self identifying as a creative embroiderer, and began exhibiting.
• In late 1987 Mike was transferred to Denver USA. I joined the Embroiderers Guild of America, learned traditional American patchwork and quilting, but by 1991 was designing and exhibiting original quilted textile art – widely known as art quilts, see www.saqa.com which I continued as we returned to Australia in 1995.
• 1998 onwards – Still making and exibiting art quilts, Mike an a colleague began a project here, and I commuted Australia to Uruguay several times a year until in 2000, when for economic reasons I decided to stay here until ‘the job’ was done – long story; and I became an accidental immigrant.
• Since 2019 I’ve used more hand stitch, increasingly so since the pandemic, returning to my creative embroidery knowledge and experience with fresh eyes. I took a few online workshops during the pandemic and affiliated with SAQA’s 3D Special Interest Group. Besides exhibiting internationally, I’ve been participating in juried group shows here in Uruguay, but an upcoming solo exhibition in January ’26, Casa de la Cultura, Maldonado UY, Jan 2 – 27, will be my first solo show here since 2009, a long gap partly due to some major life events, c’est la vie 😉 !!!

Although I don’t remember who said it or wrote it, I encountered this idea decades ago, and it has become an important mantra that I have been known to declare at suitable times, even muttering it under my breath when tidying up after something creative, ranging from the kitchen to my sewing room. It’s very affirming, and sometimes soothing.

Some people call this kind of thing play and in an exploratory sense it is. This stretchy gold metallic polyester fabric, of a very fine knit coated on one wide with a metallic finish has intrigued me since I bought it early this year and explored it’s handling propertlies. – I just re-read that article, and had forgotten what I discovered about ironing it without melting it.

As my regular readers know, I’ve used it in various 2D and 3D creations this year. It’s wonderful in raw edge applique and makes fabulous stuffed puffs.

Another property I’ve found interesting is that it in small pieces it’s not ‘floppy’, so it has some potential as an edging. This morning’s samples as in the above photo might look like floor sweepings on their way to the bin, but I learned a great deal more about this stuff in a couple of hours’ play, and I see a lot to remember and think about.