Hi everyone! With the southern hemisphere going into summer, we here in Sunny South Africa, are experiencing the most beautiful weather! A little walk in the garden shows all the little summer garden critters hard at work. The fragrance of Yesterday, today and tomorrow and Jasmine float everywhere and life is just the best!

Of course, life just seems to get better when I walk inside and see the beautiful Q24 waiting for me with someone’s quilt on it, waiting to be quilted. The excitement when everything is set up and waiting for those first stitches to happen! I don’t know if other quilters experience the same feelings just before they start quilting a new project. It is almost the same feeling that I used to get just before I started writing an exam. Butterflies in the stomach, slightly sweaty hands and mind focused completely on the task that lies ahead. As soon as I make the first stitches, it is almost as if a feeling of total calm envelopes me and then everything just seems to flow from there. The purring sound of the machine relaxes me and even though I have to concentrate all the time as my work is never a repetitive pattern, I find that I am so focused that the rest of life’s problems disappear into the back of my mind.

In a previous blog I promised to show a couple of my quilts and tell you more about these. I also told you that I enter quilt competitions all the time and that I try to inspire every quilter to do the same. People often ask me where I find inspiration from and my reply most of the time is that I am interested in the fragile nature of the world we live in and I attempt to translate this fragility into wall art. I create beauty which I find in nature around me so, although a number of my works are protests against the destruction of our world or against violence against women and children, not every artwork is a protest. I try to express my perception of the world around me, whether in nature or human society.

Viewing from left to right, the skintones represent women that violence is committed against, to broken skin, blood and bruises to coagulated blood and finally death. Currently in an exhibition at The Art Room (Jhb) (Foundation pieced, fabric manipulation and free motion machine embroidery, burnt with a soldering iron and a heat-gun)

This is my protest against fracking in the Karoo and therefore the destruction of this arid but beautiful landscape in South Africa. (Fabric manipulation and free motion machine embroidery)

I often make use of synthetic fabrics, superimposed on 100% cotton which is heavily embroidered and burnt to give the desired effect. I work on my Bernina 770 and now that I have the Bernina Q24, all my quilting will be done on it. In the past, I did most of the quilting on the 770 and before I had the 770, I worked on my little workhorse, the Bernina Aurora. When I talk about embroidery on my work, I mean free motion machine embroidery which is a passion of mine!

This is what I think it will look like below the surface if government gives the go-ahead for fracking in the Karoo. (This is where I used my technique of burnt synthetic silk, superimposed on heavily embroidered 100% cotton.)

Maybe I will chat about it and give you tips on my experience with free motion machine embroidery in another blog soon! In my next blog though, I will be talking about machine couching so keep watching! Please remember to leave a comment!