In this new showcase I’m featuring four Modern Quilters that you will love!
Donna Ward
I am Donna Ward from Hamilton, New Zealand and I have had a passion for sewing and quilt-making most of my life. I have always classed myself as a traditional quilt-maker but with a modern flair. I love to use clear colours and modern designed fabrics and use a variety of piecing techniques although Foundation Paper Piecing has long been afavorite. I also love to free motion quilt both on my small domestic machine and on my longarm machine.
I have never been one to follow the rules and having been self-taught usually make up my own designs, often based around a traditional block or design. This has led me to designing a range of patterns.
Inspiration can be found everywhere, especially as I live not far from the beautiful beaches of the Coromandel where I am lucky to spend a lot of time. I also find the fabric designs and coloursinspire the quilt. At the moment I am using a lot of fabrics designed by Alison Glass. Thesefabrics always seem to bring out the best in me.
Over the years I have won a diverse array of national and international awards. In 2003 I was awarded the Jewel Pearce Patterson Scholarship for International Quilt Teachers and in 2017 myquilt “Fly” won Best of Show at the New Zealand National Quilt Symposium.
Although my quilting journey has taken its twists and turns over the years, I have never lost my longtime passion for quiltmaking and am so lucky to have found this wonderful medium at an early age and love to pass my skills onto others.
Bénédicte Sultan
I’m Bénédicte, former anthropology student and business manager who founded «La roulotte de Sido» at the very beginning of the pandemic.I like to consider « La roulotte » as a ever-changing and evolving place to think, learn and create textiles art.Textiles are day to day and lifelong close companions. They are used to protect, warm and adorn bodies and to mark every steps of our life time.
« La roulotte » is an intimate travel through my proper story and link to threads, fabrics and way to do in textiles arts. As I was a kid I fell in love with ancient quilts and specially shakers and quakers art and craft for their ethics, use of second hand fabrics and community work.I usually start my work with a scrap with a story to tell: family clothes, piece of curtains, mended old bed sheets…and recently gifts from old ladies encountered along the way.
This tiny piece of fabric is the core of the study and is associated in a very intuitive way to others in order to form a picture.My colors are inspired by nature and specially local colors of Britany, I try to use local plants to create a sort of photography of my familiar places. I I try to express my relation to time passing, lineage and transmission with my quilts which are surely created to last but also be transformed by use and owners.
La roulotte de Sido is named in honor to my parents who lead me to arts and specially my mother Gabrielle, French language teacher (admirer of Gabrielle Sidonie Colette ) and her powerful fantasy.It is dedicated to the incredible technique and art of women who have been creating beauty with modesty and humble passion through quilting for ages all around the world.
Rebekah Johnston
My name is Rebekah Johnston (She/Her) and I am based in Nottingham in the UK. I make textile art in the form of quilts and wall hangings.
I made my first quilt about 8 years ago for a friend’s baby and taught myself via various tutorials I found online. I made 2 small quilts and a cushion and then stopped! I came back to sewing and quilting more recently after a period of difficult mental health forced me to slow down and take some time off work. I am so happy that I have made space for it in my life!
I have had a need to make for as long as I can remember. As a child I enjoyed customising my clothing, making jewellery from found objects as well as drawing and painting. I have a strong visual memory; the patterns from bedsheets from my early childhood in 80’s Germany, embroidered tablecloths and wooden folk art plates brought back from Poland, my Grandad’s garage full of wood for his carpentry projects. I feel that all of these things find their way into my work in some form.
I like to create pieces with bold impact from a distance to draw the viewer in, noticing more subtle textured details on closer inspection. Often it’s the process itself that inspires the outcome. More and more these days I make things by hand rather than machine. This method of making slow and contemplative a little like breath work. It helps to ground me when I’m feeling anxious and bring me back to the present moment. It’s a special type of concentration that allows me to be very focused on my work but also allows my mind to wonder. This is my favourite thing about making; it’s very meditative.
My colour palette is fairly muted. I tend to choose the same colours as I wear or decorate my home in. Sometimes this is because I’m using offcuts from my clothing projects or old bedding for example. Working in sustainable ways has now begun to inform the outcome. I am inspired by the challenge of using offcuts from other projects as this allows me to work with shapes I wouldn’t have considered if cutting out myself. I like to play around with positive and negative space, working intuitively until the composition feels balanced. I enjoy finding contrasts within the elements, dark verses light, a bold line near a textured line, the subtle ripple of hand quilted stitches next to a hard appliqued outline for example. Exploring hand stitching in a very free way, each stitch responding to the last, growing into something new. Letting go of perfectionism and allowing the materials to dictate what they want to be.
I view quilts as art and consider myself an artist. I am interested in the relationship between what is considered art or craft. I find it frustrating that traditionally female pursuits still don’t quite have the same status as other art forms and I wonder why this is? If I stretch a quilt over a canvas frame, does that make it more of an art form than if I sleep under it on my bed? These are some of the issues I would like to address in my work as it develops.
Robin Thomas
Sewing has always been a part of my life and I don’t really remember when I started. My mother says when I was 3, I came home from the neighbor’s house with gabardine squares sewn together telling her “I did it.” I remember being small and sitting on my grandmother’s knee while we sewed with her hands over the top of mine sewing whatever she was making at the time. The summer I turned nine I took sewing lessons from a local seamstress who taught me a speed tailoring technique to make my first garment. I sewed mostly garments and home décor through 4-H until I was in high school. I made my first quilt while in high school to take with me to college. Today after lots of years and hundreds of quilts, I found my place in the world of modern quilting.
The modern quilting movement showed me that my quilts weren’t inferior with simplified designs and solid or read solid fabrics. They held all the history and craftsmanship of all the quilters who came before but just looked different. The deep saturated colors and colors with a little dinge resonate with me. I lean toward warm colors and yellow-greens in my work and brown is a favorite. I am partial to a true neutral gray and a black navy as neutrals.
The world around me inspires me. I see quilts in everything. I am an engineer by training and it shows in my quilts. Graph paper, colored pencils, a ruler, and a calculator are my go-to for turning my ideas into patterns. Improv makes me sweat unless I can define a long list of rules to create structure. I love the fact that I can take large pieces of fabric, cut it into tiny pieces and put it back together into something so different from where I started. When I sit at my machine, I feel connected to my creator and something bigger than myself.
