In making textile art I tend to stick to the low tech ways I’ve used ‘for ever’ – those basic hand and machine sewing skills that I learned when young. Despite amazing on-line opportunities today that mean you can take a fantastic course without leaving home and carting equipment and supplies around, I’m not as interested in studying with certain Big Name Teachers as I used to be. I’m no longer seduced by dazzling techniques that require either digital technology skills and equipment, or that require me to roll up my sleeves and get into dying fabrics to do artistic things with. Don’t get me wrong – down the years I have learned a lot of interesting stuff in very inspiring workshops with some fantastic teachers, but through building on that learning and fusing it with what I’ve done before, I’ve learned much more, too. And, in what may or may not be age-related, I quite often re-visit past works and re-read some posts on this blog, a process that sometimes reminds me of something I need to re-visit, and sometimes I find an old topic that suggests a whole a new approach. Perhaps the pace of the modern world and the terrible state it is in right now has made me a bit change resistant in one important area I can still control – my own passion for making art with fabric and thread.

Over thirteen years ago I wrote in a blog post about this quilt:

“Yet it is an important work, because it took me into the “Desert Tracks” works that followed, and will probably be added to over time. It is a work focused on those aspects of the traditional ancestors of modern art quilts that appeal to me and appear repeatedly in my own work – blocks/units, repetition, and hand quilted surface patterning.” Those words still hold, and I eventually bestowed the unexciting title “Heritage Quilt” on it because of its connection to traditional quilts of the past, and its importance in shaping much of my subsequent work.

This next quilt, Strip Lighting, marks the beginning of at least 15 years when machine pieced strips, or inserts, became the principle surface design element in my work. Principally about 1cm or about 1/2 inch wide, they began as carefully measured straight strips cut with the rotary cutter.

I maintained that width for a long time, even as they gradually became increasingly curved and began to vary in width. After about 2007 the widths ranged from barely a very narrow 1/16″ wide and on up, while I also learned to handle more pronounced curves. Bushfire 4 and Ebb & Flow 14 are two favourite complex examples of this development:

There are many more, though, and a downloadable PDF on my website lists most of my works in chronological order, although strangely when I looked today Strip Lighting somehow wasn’t listed but I’ll fix that soon – no system’s perfect!

In the last 10 years or so I have used many more non-traditional materials with my favourite techniques; at other times resorting to applique, fusing and certainly a growing amount of hand stitch over that time, and that brings me to Pandemic Pattern, made in that scary period of the pandemic before we were able to get vaccinated.

I simply cut and pinned strips on the fabric, one or two at a time, and oversewed them with machine sewing thread (about 1000m of it all up) I then added fusing to the process to make it easier, and my way of working became very rhythmic. A great stress reliever during the covid pandemic, as all the work I made in that time depended heavily on hand stitch, and certainly made me realise how much I love to stitch using fine thread to make repeated marks on fabric.

And, as I love metallics, I took this a bit further with Bush Colours – overstitching with gold was a natural development. The strips here were built from sewing together related scraps of fabric

Here’s my SAQA 2024 Benefit Auction piece for the online auction later in the year. I usually make it early in the year as it often serves as a sample for a major work to come. My current project is in a different colour scheme admittedly, but definitely builds on new experience gained in this one –

Dividing geometric shapes into sections by inserting contrasting strips was an effective technical way of adding colour and complexity. As my interest in landscape moved from colours and textures (pre-1989 embroideries) through to lines and shapes in art quilt arena, I also found strips a good way to ‘draw’ the shapes of landscape, and some time soon I’ll write another post in this series to sketch the development of how I’ve depicted abstract landscapes.