Margaret’s crafts
Margaret has been a member of the Wellington Quilting scene for many years and is always doing something new- currently she’s doing mixed media. She has been quilting since 1993 when a series of sad events prompted her to seize the moment and start doing things that she had been putting off.
Her first quilt had minimal quilting as she didn’t want to go over the blocks, but she has since embraced the joy of story telling through the quilts and the top-stitching.
We were graced with many quilts, many of which are award-winning, and their back stories. Especially interesting were the quilts she made celebrating the places she bought the fabrics from -her Tokyo quilt from fabrics purchased at an international show in Tokyo and her Egyptian quilt from Jordan and Egypt among them.
Another was Houston, Texas. They were calling for blue and white quilts (for their sapphire anniversary) and her friend had a quilt accepted for the exhibition, so they both flew there to seen the exhibition. Margaret made a Houston quilt with all the fabric that she bought there.
She also ,ade a full sized 50th birthday quilt for her son, using a pattern called Dalesford after he took her on a road trip in Australia and they went past a town called Dalesford. She liked it so much that she made a smaller Dalesford quilt for herself. The quilt consists of a series of borders, each one a different pattern.
Her quilting group does lots of block swops. She showed a quilt made of shoefly blocks, each block set at a slight angle which she called ‘sticky fly papers’ quilt. She exhibited at the Manawatu symposium as a group quilt and it won a prize.
We also got to see some quilts she teaches (sparking interest within our group for classes in the new year). She’s taught the bird quilt 16 times so far, and has a tree pattern which is done for christmas or for winter.
Margaret does textile art with a group called three squared. They are invited to exhibit throughout NZ. Each quilt is about A3 sized. Started by having theme like ‘bridges’. Involved printing onto tap paper. Another theme was colours picked by name like ‘seagrass’. Elements: earth, sea, sky. Artists challenge.
Her group has a challenge of putting scraps of material into a plastic container and then passing it on to someone else to make a postcard sized quilt. And also making a little something to give to the person who gave the material.
We also had a wonderful show and tell. New members Tui, Finlay and Todd showcased their first quilt with us, and -with a personal bias- Helen Hindmarsh presented a beautiful quilt made from a recent Block of the Month that I presented very recently. It is probably the fastest anyone has ever put together a Block of the Month quilt before! No shame to those with blocks from last decade..
There was also a delicate white quilt made by Nancy from her Mothers blouses. This quilt is best seen in the close ups so check those out at the bottom
