Welcome!
How it all began - short version
When you simply can’t find the right fabric….
Truth be told I was making a quilt back in 2017 from a jellyroll I had purchased at a local fabric store and was struggling to find backing material to match it. A search for quilt backing lead me to Spoonflower (add link to shop) and I was instantly transfixed.
As someone who has dabbled in drawing, sketching and painting, as well as sewing, crochet, knitting, embroidery, I’ve even tried sculpture and pottery and painting on pottery which is great fun… but I digress…I was blown away about the possibility of having art, MY art produced on fabric. The idea that I could choose the colours, the motifs, the layout…ooo…
I couldn’t get the idea out of my head and spent the next few years making art as well as keeping on learning how to quilt.
Mostly though I was trying to figure out how you go from physical paint on paper images to digital files that can be used to print on fabric. Thanks to my then tweeny children I played with a variety of apps that might work for turning my art into designs for fabric. But it all felt a bit hard…
Then the pandemic hit and hard took on a whole new meaning.
Living in Melbourne we had some pretty long lockdowns and although I’m okay with using learning management systems and teaching online I needed that art time. It was that or my sanity.
We had sooooo many hours indoors, an ideal time to learn how to use these apps. On my middle child’s recommendation Procreate became my go to app and end of 2020 after the first long lockdown I uploaded my first fabric designs to Spoonflower. They were my Under the Cherry Tree designs and hence they grace my website, mostly as a reminder to me of where I started but I also really like the design and I love cherries. Yum!
How it all began - Long Version
This goes all the way back to my grandmother, who was a seamstress.
In fact I’d probably have to admit it goes back to my great grandfather, a feminist before his time. My great grandfather was a Herring fisherman and businessman in the city of Harderwijk in The Netherlands. He only had one child, a daughter and held the firm opinion that a woman equally to a man must have a trade or qualification so that she can care for herself and not be beholden to anyone. Can you believe that? This would have been back in the early 1900s. Maybe he’d read Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. I very much doubt it, unless it was translated into Dutch but even then I suspect he didn’t read it.
Fortunately for me he bankrolled my grandmother’s seamstress course, she in turn taught my mother all she knew. My mother is a master at sewing and I as a little child gained the benefits of her skill, her mother’s before her and my great grandfather’s aforethought.
My fondest and some of my earliest memories are Tuesday afternoons when my mother would sew. I would play with bobbins and bits of fabric under the dining table, mesmerised by the hum of mum’s Husqvarna as she pressed on the shiny black peddle with her foot. At about 3 or 4 years of age I first learned hand stitching and have loved sewing ever since. I was also blessed with a father who was a carpenter who was happy for us to tinker with his tools. Rather than play with my toys as a child I much rathered sewing them clothes and building them furniture which I upholstered with glued, sewn and nailed fabrics. To boot both my parents are great at drawing.
And there it is, that is how my love for making began.
Thanks Again
Thanks for joining me on this journey. Be sure to check back in here to see how my art, fabric designs or quilt products are coming along.