Being a student.....

1993 - 1994 was a wonderful creative time with many opportunities as I was also fortunate to serve on the Kaffrarian Quilters' Guild Committee.   The Committee invited Lorraine Steenberg from Jagersfontein to teach a machine embroidery workshop in East London - she had quite an impressive CV.     Lorraine specialized in Madeira Machine Embroidery and did lots of workshops for Bernina and had won some international awards for beautiful tablecloths and similar articles.   Although I was packing up our home to move to Harrismith, I felt obliged to attend the workshop as I was on the Committee and felt I needed to support the workshop.   The shoe was now on the other foot and I was the student for the very first time....!

The workshop was held in 2 groups, a morning group and an afternoon group for 5 days....    We soon discovered why we could only survive 3 hours per day.....     I would go home every day with a monster headache and eyes completely out of focus.....   

Lorraine was a wonderful teacher and I suppose she was used to the reaction of the students as the work was so different to normal quilting.    She immediately threw us out of our comfort zones....     She taught us to do free motion machine embroidery with dropped feed dogs, to work in an embroidery hoop and to our horror, to sometimes work without a presser foot!    She also showed us a very important function on our sewing machines, the slow speed button!   Quite a few of us drew blood stitching through fingers etc.     Her designs provided in a kit were very specific and we slowly embroidered the designs which she had prepared.   We filled in with long and short stitches, granite stitches, some cut work, doing line stitches without using the zig zag stitch on the machine!     She also taught us about directional flow in a design.     It was extremely difficult attempting this with arms frozen stiff as we were all so stressed, not forgetting the neck spasms......   We were starting to settle down by the 3rd lesson, but it was very intense.    By the last lesson, Lorraine showed us a packet of Avalon (wash-away plastic) and told us what we could do with it although she did not demonstrate working with it.   We were all intrigued and were delighted when we found some in a shop in East London.    

When I was doing the final packing of our home, I was pondering about this workshop.    I wondered how I would ever apply my newly acquired skills to my style of quilting as there were no common ground.......   

I learnt a very important lesson from her which I still apply when I teach!     No trying on a sample piece first, just dive in and work directly onto the prepared piece!   If you have to practice until you do perfect work, it is unlikely that you will ever attempt work on the project....!   Being in a workshop situation, is most often stressful for the student.    Usually they unpick when they get home and perfect the technique in their own time (or the project lands in the cupboard as a UFO!)

Another lesson learnt was to be open minded about a workshop and absorb like a sponge, the emphasis is actually on learning new skills.     Even if you don't really like the workshop, you will most likely learn something new or it will trigger something different for you to develop further.     Every thing Lorraine did on the machine looked so easy, it was amazing to watch her stitch as she was very much in control of her sewing machine.   I realized that she was a master of her craft and that I still had lots to learn.     I have never repeated any of the methods or designs which I learnt in this workshop, but it gave me the freedom to play with my sewing machine.   It opened my eyes for other possibilities and I took from this workshop what I wanted and developed it further which is still an ongoing process.    I think I can say in all modesty that I am now also in control of my sewing machine.....    I attribute this wonderful skill to Lorraine Steenberg.

Working in a creative genre is a continuous learning curve as there are always new things to discover.   In that lies the excitement of exploring and being creative.....

Sadly for me, it was time to leave East London....

For Jayne and more.....

My friend Jayne:
Some people come into your life for a reason, others for a season and the rest become friends......    I am deviating a bit from My Journey as I need to tell you about my friend Jayne...

I have never really been one for a quilting group as I feel my quilting approach is too individualistic and I don't really fit into the mould!   However, when we moved to East London, I did start a small quilting group to make friends.     I started chatting to a lady at a Kaffrarian Quilters' Guild meeting and I mentioned that I was thinking of starting a group......    We realised that we lived in the same area and decided to meet the next week and see how it went!     Jayne and I later invited 2 other ladies to join us on Wednesday mornings - we became firm friends and were a wonderful support system for each other.

I think the reason we love our quilting friends is for the unconditional support, love, humour and appreciation we get.  

Jayne became a surrogate granny for my kids and kept us going when Willem had to move ahead of us to Harrismith.   She taught me to believe in myself, that one is never too old to try new things, age is just a number and life is for the living.....!    I am convinced that Jayne was born in the wrong generation ...........     When everybody was making pretty pink/blue/green quilts, eyes would pop when Jayne used orange, magenta, lime and black for a bold design and then hand quilt with metallic thread!    Way ahead of her time, never afraid to experiment, quite fearless in her approach....!   I think it rubbed off on me, she always encouraged me to explore, to push my boundaries.....!    She was instrumental in launching my quilting career by taking my quilts to the USA and bringing back an award, kept me sane when I was working on my first exhibition, she constantly encouraged me to push myself further and provided a permanent sounding board for all my ideas..........!    A true friend indeed.

I was fortunate to visit Jayne a week ago and she showed me a wonderful quilt which she made in 2009.    She started the quilt in a workshop - she was 83 years old at the time and won first prize at the East Coast Quilters' Guild (previously the Kaffrarian Quilters' Guild) annual exhibition!   

Jayne McComb and me November 2011 in East London



Jayne's peacock quilt made in 2009 when she was 83 years old



Teaching at Festival 1994:

Teaching at a National Quilt Festival for the first time was so intimidating - I was very anxious ......!   The awards won for African Heritage helped to settle my nerves a bit, but I felt so green............    
Ideas for workshops come to me in the same way as ideas for quilts - I get a mental picture/flash of an idea which I then turn into a workshop.    I vividly remember the idea for this workshop coming to me when I was struggling with designing the 1993 exhibition quilts.    I had leftover motifs (cut pieces where the colours did not work) which I kept to do something different with.    As I was re-arranging these motifs into new designs, the idea came to me to make paper templates for students to help them design Ndebele quilts.    I bought poster paper in various colours and started cutting templates for each student who received a packet of these motifs to design their own wallhanging.  

I met such lovely people in this class and it is still very special to bump into them at National Quilt Festivals...  A few names which I remember - Pat Perry, Annette Miller, Lin Simpson.......



Students busy with Ndebele Machine Applique in 1994, Cape Town

 The students and I survived my first attempt at being a National Quilt Festival Teacher, I will always be extremely grateful for this wonderful opportunity which opened so many new doors for me.

Next time my first encouter with machine embroidery.....

1994 - A memorable year ..........

1994 will go down in history as the year of the first democratic elections in South Africa...... 

Personally it was also a memorable year as I was taking my quilting "career" to the next level - participating in a National Quilt Festival as teacher and quilt artist for the first time......   The only dark cloud was that we were moving again as Willem was transferred to work in Phuthaditjaba in Qwa-Qwa and we would live in Harrismith.      The property market was extremely limp as South Africa was anxiously awaiting the birth of the Rainbow Nation, so the kids and I had to stay behind in East London to sell our house. ....   

In the meantime life went on for us and I threw myself into serious work.   I had to prepare for the Ndebele Machine Applique workshop at the 1994 National Quilt Festival in Cape Town........!    I was excited yet also extremely anxious.     I was worried about my level of expertise and how I would fit in amongst the well known quilters and teachers..........   I was in awe just mentioning their names...   Paul Schutte, Jutta Faulds, Odette Tolksdorff, Lee Hackman, Rosalie Dace, Sue Akerman, Suzette Ehlers to name a few....     I had a serious case of stage fright...!

As I was a new kid on the block, I felt compelled to enter a quilt in the competition to showcase my work to establish some credibility.  The festival theme reminded me of the shrub (Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow), so a floral themed quilt was the obvious choice.   After finishing the bird quilt the previous year, I became very interested in realistic themes for my quilts.    I chose the protea as theme because Cape Town/Western Cape is synonymous with fynbos.   I used my group as sounding board and the consensus was that it would be too difficult and I was crazy even to try....    Well, I just love a challenge...     My idea was to incorporate the proteas with Ndebele designs to give the quilt a distinctive South African flavour.

Making the bird quilt the previous year, established a process or recipe of how I make these quilts.   The first and most important ritual is the mental process.   I will sometimes do mental gymnastics for over a year before starting a quilt.   I can only start such a quilt once I had a "visual flash", I feel very blessed that I have this ability.   I will mentally do all the problem solving before I actually start the quilt, so once I start work, it flows quite easily.   Once I had my "news flash", I firstly determine the finished size of the quilt, width of the border and secondly do the layout of the blocks and other fillers.    When preparing patterns for all the different elements, balance, scale and proportions are very important.

For African Heritage, I machine appliqued all the floral and Ndebele panels and embellished the flowers with hand embroidery.    At the time, silk ribbon was very new on the market and I used it very effectively for spiky leaves and Ericas.    When I had to plan/make the border, I was very frustrated that I could not find suitable fabric.    Plan B was to make my own fabric - I used a good quality calico and painted proteas on it using a stencil which I made...!    It looked awful, so I tried another piece in a more abstract way using all the different colours of the flowers in the quilt which seemed to work.   This was the very first piece of fabric which I painted for a quilt and the start of my painted fabrics.

African Heritage/protea quilt took about 4 1/2 months to make.    I hand quilted around the motifs and the background of the 4 floral blocks, the border was machine quilted in straight lines.


African Heritage 1994

This quilt is very special to me - it was my first entry at a National Quilt Festival and won 3 awards, 2nd place in Applique Small, Highly Commended in Machine Applique and Highly Commended in Other - Traditional.   It was also published in the commemorative brochure of the festival.    I was so excited, happy and in awe............

Making African Heritage, was a huge learning curve as it was an experimental piece and would set the tone for my future work.   I particularly enjoy the research which forms part of making such quilts and adding elements like the little butterfly with their habitat the Western Cape working around the fynbos.....

I was approached by Dutch lady in East London to make replicas of two of the blocks - it was the only time that I made replicas, something which I did not really enjoy.    I suppose I like the challenge of pushing my own boundaries and exploring......  





The two replica panels made for a commission

(My son held these two panels for me to take photographs, they look a bit distorted, sorry!)

After the Festival, it was time to return to Mother Earth and start packing to move to Harrismith, but I first attended a workshop in East London...........










A year of many firsts......

I have mentioned a phone call at the end of the previous post....    I was left feeling a bit overwhelmed after the exhibition and wondered what I would do with all these wallhangings.   The week after the exhibition, I received a phone call from a lady saying that she saw the quilts through the gallery windows after hours and was hoping to see the quilts in my studio......

Nan and Huub van der Kolk promptly visited and immediately bought 93-04, my personal favourite.   I was overjoyed, my first quilt sold!    

93-04:  First quilt ever sold!

Nan and Huub owned the Willowvale Hotel in the Transkei and loved everything South African.   We chatted away like old friends as they were very interested in my work.   They left with the quilt and soon phoned again with an offer!   They were on their way to visit their daughter and her family in Swaziland and offered to take the exhibition to Swaziland and hoped to sell all the quilts for me!    The most amazing was that they gave me a cheque for all the quilts and Huub made me phone the bank to check that the cheque was good....... !    Truly good people.     The deal was that if they did not sell the quilts, I would return the money.   Well, they returned home with only one quilt, buying and selling 9 quilts.    I was stunned and very touched as they helped a total stranger.

I think I was left with the feeling of what now...!     I started dabbling with more designs and made more wallhangings.    I loved playing with all this colour... I also starting incorporating beadwork which I bought from street vendors to give the quilts a true South African feeling.   My friend Jayne McComb insisted on taking two quilts 93-13 & 93-18 to the USA as she was going to attend a quilt show in Ontario, California.    Yes, there is an Ontario in the States....    She showed these two quilts at the Show and Tell and was promptly awarded a Special Award for the two pieces.    Jayne sold the two quilts before returning home.....  This was the very first ribbon which I won for a quilt(s)!

 

93-13




93-18

I was invited to participate in the annual Round Table group art exhibtion in King William's Town for which I made 5 or 6 pieces.    I also received a commission for a bird quilt for a beach house in Kei Mouth which was very exciting.   The client took me on a site inspection so that I could see where the quilt would hang.   I find such an inspection very helpful as it sets the "mood" for the quilt as even the colour of the walls would influence something so specific.    I was given some fabric for the border which decided the colours which I would use.     I bought a bird book and started some research!      I chose birds which would tone in with the fabric of the border and did a submission to the client.   She was happy so I started work.   In hindsight, the quilt would have looked much better with more quilting, I think a mistake of most inexperienced quilters.   This was my first dabble with realistic work.

93-17 First realistic quilt and first commission

1993 in East London was a wonderful creative time for me with many "firsts"....     I had my first joint exhibition in an art gallery, two quilts went overseas and was sold there, I got my first commission for a quilt, I applied and was accepted to teach at a National Quilt Festival.....    The kids were well adjusted and happy at school, life was so good and I relished every moment........

And then it was 1994.............