I made “Maelstrom” for a 2009 exhibition with fellow members of a small group of Australian and New Zealand group of art quilters. Themed ” A Change in The Weather” the works on global climate change opened in Wellington NZ in June 2009, and travelled to Christchurch NZ before crossing to Australia where it was seen in several places after that.

My inspiration was the cartographic symbol used by weather forecasters to represent on maps the location and progress of the most violent storms – cyclones, typhoons and hurricanes in their relevant regions of Oceania, Asia and the Americas. The Earth is represented by the very dark green base fabric. The huge variety of colours translates into the gathering swirl of  information, problems and expert opinions on what needs to be done to help the world deal with and adapt to the changes in climate now taking place at an accelerating rate.  Red is a colour warning of danger, hence my choice for the hand quilted grid pattern. Interestingly, this statement written in 2009 could have been written today, suggesting change has been slow around the issue of climate change, according to reports from the recently concluded COP30 conference.

I’ve always loved this piece, even though I always felt it was an awkward shape we all had to make our pieces to, but think that was because some limitation of the display area available to that number of wall quilts in the gallery with which our organiser arranged the show. So in the next few days I’m going to re-size it to 50cm x 50cm, and mount it on a white canvas stretcher, and include it in my upcoming January 2026 exhibition. I personally love things mounted on white or painted stretchers without further framing, but with a standard size a new owner has the option to choose a frame that goes with their particular decor style or that matches a colour in their own couch, so to speak 🙂

Throughout the history of textiles, of cloth making and all the needle arts and crafts, change has been constant, and until recently was all about cultural and technological change affecting the natural fibres produced by animals and plants that man processed for use in all those crafts. If this interests you I recommend the extraordinary website https://hapticandhue.com/about/ with heaps of reading and excellent podcasts presented by weaver Jo Andrews and several experts in their textile fields. While writing this post I checked on when man-made fibres appeared, and found this interesting summary – https://www.andy-kirkpatrick.com/articles/view/a_short_history_of_man_made_fabrics In 1885 the first fibre made from cellulose fibre was exhibited in London UK, and by 1899 it was being produced commercially in France. Since WWII in man-made fibres have exploded in use for many practical reasons, including being cheaper than natural fibres to produce, and being often stronger or more durable. There will be nothing like zero fossil fuel usage in the future of Man – they are a key element in textiles as well as being vital to apparently 6000+ applications vital to living and saving lives in the world’s 9 billion population..

I am so grateful for today’s digital technology through which the internet apps like Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram et al, and artists’ own websites, give instant access to the work of many fibreartists around the world. Fifty years ago when I became really interested in fibreart as an art form, it was much harder to keep up with developments as they were happening. After marrying in 1969, because of Mike’s work we lived for nearly two decades in remote, isolated areas and mining towns (Kalgoorlie, Darwin, Katherine, Mt.Isa) While they all had lively arts communities, each was a small world, and most of us had only occasional access to real time exhibitions in ‘the Big Smoke’. To get an idea of who was being inspired by what to create their fibreart, we all depended on print – exhibition catalogues, books, subscription magazines, and whatever could be obtained through town libraries; and in those places visiting workshop teachers were always a welcome treat. Since 1987 we’ve lived in cities (Denver, Perth, Montevideo) where it is great to be able to visit exhibitions in person.

Since medieval times, all the broad craft categories were backed by guilds of qualified master crafstmen, so there were guilds of spinners, weavers, lacemakers, dyers, metal workers, carpenters, potters, wood carvers, woodworkers, stone masons, and many more crafts. Most of those crafts were also carried out on domestic/nonprofessional levels, of course, and when I began stitching, ‘the crafts’ were still separated out like this, both in perception and reality. The whole process was considered to be making ‘craft’ anyway, as it was mostly from domestic settings and with a utility purpose. Mum smocked little dresses for us, made very fine crocheted table mats and runners for the antique dining table, and worked canvas needlepoint designs for cair covers and framing. One was mounted on the panel on a firescreen produced by Dad’s best mate, Uncle Bill, who was a furniture manufacturer. Needlework, knitting, lacemaking and crochet skills were principally handed on down through parents and other female relatives, although I know in 1945 my newly married mother aged 20, attended evening classes at the local tech college to learn basic home sewing and dressmaking which she hadn’t learned earlier, largely due to the social disruption in WWII (she also attended cooking classes, and became excellent at both) People knitted or crocheted wool or other threads; others spun and wove wall hangings of wool or linen, people made baskets of plant fibre from stems and leaves; embroiderers decorated things with hand stitch (machine embroidery was mostly used for company logos and names on clothing, hotel and hospital linens etc.) Quilters cut and pieced fabrics or stitched applique piece onto a fabric to produce a surface design before quilting the layers, and either way, they were ‘quilters’. Most craft makers were and still are grouped or described by the techniques used, and we still join established guilds and clubs as well as informal groups based around those particular crafts. Even as I write this, in a few hours’ time I’ll be talking over Zoom with a group of stitchers who formed initially, during the pandemic, under the auspices of StitchClub in 2022. We ‘meet’ fortnightly, and though we’re scattered between UK, USA and Canada and Uruguay, we’re as close as any group I’ve ever belonged to, like the Over The Edge Quilters (Denver) or Goldfingers Embroiderers (Kalgoorlie WA) and the internet makes it all possible – yay!

Which brings me to Studio Art Quilt Associates, SAQA When I joined soon after it formed, the internet was still new, and promotional publicity comprised albums of slides sent out to galleries which SAQA hoped to interest in exhibitions of quilted 2D fibreart, fairly newly beng recognised as ‘art quilts’ about which the organisation has always worked to educate the public. For several years now, SAQA has included quilted 3D objects, too, and has a dedicated special interest group for members interested in making 3D works, Back in August I was invited to talk to that group about the 3D creations I’d occasionally made in my fibreart career. In 1978 I was fortunate to travel from Mt Isa, Queensland, down to Goolwa, South Australia, for a 9-day summer school, which was fabulous, and I can’t overstate how influential that experience continues to be. For example, I was introduced to soft sculpture. A 2020 StitchClub workshop with Clarissa Calleson really revived my interest in stuffed fabric forms including suffolk puffs, and in 2024 and 2025 I made some in works selected for the first and second exhibitons of Glass+Textile here in UY.

Now I’m currrently pursuing stuffed puffs, as discussed in recent posts here and here. Where this will lead I’m not sure, but several commitments are looming, so I’ll be giving them a rest until well into January, and who knows what could develop over that time?

I’ve mentioned it a few times, but this announcement image will be popping up in people’s feeds over the next few weeks. The opening is on the evening of Friday January 2nd – and yes, I’ll be there that evening, so do come and say hi if you go then.

Although I auditioned pink/orange/red fabrics for the background to this piece, I found it really needed to be mounted on something glittery; and interestingly silver and pewter didn’t do it, but I did have this tiny gold dots on black, perfect. And there’s still another week before I take this and several other Growth pieces to to my photographer Eduardo. I’m considering adding a few little strings of beads to wander out from several of the puffs to anchor onto the background – or also considering some scattered single beads, just as on top of the puffs, in various places… and I have a few days to think about it, try one out and see…

It took me a while to realise these 3D works featuring beads and sequins really need protection when they’re being handled and in storage; so as I finished each one I’ve made a cloth bag to put it in for that protection. But before I reached that conclusion, I gifted a small one to a friend and can hardly believe I didn’t even put it in a little plastic bag, ye gods!! Anyway, my friend got it home and photogrpahed it on a piece of furniture in amonth a group of several antique silver things, so that’s nice, so the piece made the journey of several hundred kilometers safely.

So often when I need work photographed I’m in some kind of hurry, perhaps only the front looks finished but everything on the back is merely tacked into place! Or, I need the photos back that night to allow for entering some deadline on the other side of the world which is half a day ahead of Montevideo, and until the last minute I’m getting the right sized hanging rod, or tacking the binding into place as mentioned. I’ve declared this is the final one of the 3 new, 3D works I’m asking him to photograph. They’ll be included in my forthcoming solo exhibition in Maldonado; the oldest work is from 2018 but everyting else is more recent and none have been previously shown in Uruguay. It’s way too long since my last solo exhibition, for various reasons, which, if you’re close to my daily life you knew of them, anyway, and if you’re not, don’t worry, that time has passed.

Christmas is coming, and I need to focus a bit on the distant family, order gifts to be delivered from their local vendors, and pen the annual we’re-still-alive-and-hope-you-are-too newsletter to rels and friends, old and new, in places we’ve lived around the world.

I also need to focus a bit on things like organising little label panels to go near each work, organise a guest book, and an album gallery containing my resume, statement and a few things about me for visitors. I can either be quite relaxed about how it’s all falling into place, or I’m hopelessly delusional… One great thing I learned this week is that the earlier information I got that the Casa de la Cultura galleiries are open mondays to fridays AND saturdays (I’d been told it was M-F only.)

The first one of these puff compositions I named Growth, and in the couple of months since I’ve made more and enjoyed exploring them, so they’ve become a series with that name.

Not only did I have no idea what I would do with it, I confess I also bought the gold version on a black background. This fabric is polyester, a very fine jersey knit so a bit stretchy, and when filled with polyester fibre it feels nice and squishy. Very light, so all the large and medium puffs in this group have from 1 to 5 really heavy glass beads right inside to give the group a bit of heft that feels more commensurate with their appearance and size when handled.

I’m currently working on another in cottons and glittery party fabrics in shades of red, orange and pink, both prints and hand-dyed, plus tiny gold beads, of course. It’s the last new work I’m making to include in my January solo exhibition, and I have a date for Eduardo to take some photography early December. But I’ll get back to them sometime early in the New Year, and have plans to go much larger.

For more on how I’ve always chosen and bought fabric:https://www.alisonschwabe.com/weblog/?p=1712 My most important fabric rule is that I only ever buy a fabric that I love, because I know I will use it, sometime. My other rules:

• If it appeals, I buy a 1/8 – 1/4  metre/yard
• if I really like it I buy 1/2  m/yd.
• If it’s something special to me I buy 1 – 3 m/yds.
• If I am quite over-the-top delirious at finding it, which has happened a couple of times, and I’ve just bought what was left on the bolt.   

As I go larger with thee forms, making balls of waste fabric into the core inside to puff covering could become something of a stash reducer. Although as quilt making artists go, my fabric stash has always been very modest (which I attribute to my peripatetic life history) Starting from the time I took up quilt making in 1989, to when I began living here in Uruguay c. 2000, I was used to being able to pop out to a nearby fabric store that stocked only the kinds of fabrics I liked to work with any time I liked/needed to. Such shops aren’t a thing here, which in turn influenced me to explore ways of working with other fabrics, both natural and man made.