A few months ago Tara Glastonbury from Stitch and Yarn reached out to me and asked if I would like to be her partner in an international group exhibit that she conceived and was putting together. The premise of the show was 7 Australian quilters would each pick an international quilter to be their partner. Each pair of partners would then begin to have a conversation(s) (via text, email, Zoom, or even in person if possible) about anything they fancied. Each individual would then make a quilt that reflected what they had conversed about with their respective partner. I loved the concept, and thrilled with the chance to work with Tara (someone I have admired for a long time) I joyfully accepted her invitation. Tara and I conversed about many things, including personal memories associated with cloth, the love of working with previously used cloth, the idea that old or used cloth holds memories, the attraction to cloth with worn holes, faded areas, marks, stains and any sign of a previous life or use.
With those and other thoughts teased out in our conversations, we each began to create our individual quilts. I started off with this pile of vintage grain and feed sacks pulled from my stash...
All of these vintage sacks were found locally and their various shades of white, along with the stains, marks and imperfections found on them remind me of the colors and patina found on the old local white washed barns, of which many of them may have once lived in a previous life...
I decided to do a 'quilt as you go' approach, creating nine 12.5" x 12.5" blocks, made up of various raw edged appliqué patches. If any patch had a hole in it, I placed another piece of fabric behind it. For an added little touch I used bits of patterned fabrics that I gleaned from a deconstructed antique quilt. I then machine quilted each block with vertical and horizontal rows of unevenly spaced lines, again, reminiscent of those old barns with all of their wonderful lines...
I joined the 9 blocks together on my sewing machine using a zig-zag stitch, and covered up those stitches with a hand-whipped satin stitch, using many different colors of variegated threads...
I also choose to forgo traditional or faced binding, and simple repeated the hand-whipped satin stitch all around the quilt's boarder....
I revisited every hole that I had placed a piece of fabric behind, as if they were an old friend. I listened to their whispered stories of how they came to be as I did more hand-whipped satin stitches around each of their frayed borders...
I added 'fence post' hand stitches (
| | | | | |) around the edges of every patch. And then I added hand quilting down the middle of every space created by those previously machine stitched lines...
Once, when flipping the quilt around so as to stitch on a different section, I caught this view of the sun streaming in behind it and I do believe that quilt was quietly singing...
I mended threadbare areas with some needle weaving...
And when I was done, I had a quilt (relatively small at just 36" x 36")
made from cloth that has lived and continues to live a humble but honorable life.
Marked with stains from years gone by...
And newly mended holes and patches...
Full of old stories, and new ones, too...
And which most remarkably has now traveled to places that I have never been, and is hanging on a wall in a gallery on the opposite side of the world from me. Wonders never cease...
Here are our two quilts (my 'Whispered Stories' on the left and Tara's 'Sown Stories' on the right) hanging together side by side at the recent opening of the 'In Conversation" Exhibit in Sydney Australia, at Gallery76, where it will run from now through June 25, 2023, before moving on to its next location in Melbourne...
And despite looking different, with my understated quiet tones and Tara's bold use of the complimentary colors blue and orange, don't they play nicely together?! You can tell they share a background history of some sorts.
Much to our amazement, after our quilts were well on their way, Tara and I found out during a Zoom chat how many similarities we took in our approaches. Besides using repurposed cloth, we both featured holes, marks and imperfections. We both (without the prior knowleged of what the other was doing) opted for quilt-as-you-go construction methods, raw edge appliqué, and a combination of machine straight line quilted rows (going in various directions) with hand quilting interspersed between those rows. With so many ways to make a quilt, what are the odds that we would both choose so many of the same construction and quilting choices? We even both used the word 'Stories' in our titles.
The whole process was utterly fascinating and my hat is off to Tara for coming up with such a unique concept and huge bows and rounds of applause for organizing it, and shepherding it in to existence.
🧡💙🧡
Here's a pic of all the participating artists, side by side with their respective partner...
Starting at the top row, and going from left to right are:
For more information, behind the scenes info and a chance to support this exhibit, please visit the 'In Converstaion'
Buy Me a Coffee page.
PS. I seem to be having a lot of glitches concerning the ability to leave a comment, so I've just decided to disable them. Thank you though for reading. xo
