Robyn (from Healesville, Vic) wrote this as a comment to my last posting
"Anni you & Pete must be exhausted Your stand looked great, when you 1st began designing did you ever think you'd have a stand full of; sooooo many beautiful designs & your own (Petes)wool. What was your 1st design????? And how long ago did you start"
so thought I should respond with a little bit of history.....
I started to do patchwork 15 years ago and had no idea when I first started I would be doing what I do now. If a fortune teller told me I would be working with my husband in the patchwork world, own a patchwork shop and be traveling all over the world and designing books etc, I think I would have scoffed and told her she was barking mad.
Pete and I started our working careers in Brisbane - Pete as a scientist at St Lucia University, and me as a Graphic Designer in an engineering company. We both decided after about 5 years of work that city life wasn't for us, so Pete studied to be a maths/science teacher with the thought of moving to a country town. His first posting was Coonamble, a great albeit HOT town in Western NSW. With no job prospects of my own, I decided to join up to the local TAFE to meet people and learn more about patchwork and other bits and pieces. It was there that my world opened up.
I had ALWAYS sewn but had only briefly touched on patchwork. At TAFE we made sheets, covered chairs, made lamp shades etc etc. When the patchwork component of the course began I remember going home and drafting up a pattern - I don't remember there being too many patterns back then - not that I had access to anyway. A group of us then drove to Dubbo (2 hours away) to buy supplies - woo hoo - the start of my fabric stash!!! I wanted my quilt to look old and for some reason thought that if I bought certain colours, they would fade over time and it would be just what I wanted. Very strange I now realise! The colours haven't faded a bit, even with constant washing and wear and tear! My first quilt I ever made was queen size as I thought I may never make
another quilt, and decided to make one that I could use all the time. I
later released it as a pattern, simply as one of my friends wanted to
make it. This all happened about 15 years ago and here it is....
This quilt was called Day in the Country, and surprisingly it sits quite flat - I will give Tracey Jung, my TAFE teacher, the credit for that ha ha. It was machine pieced, and hand appliqued and quilted.
After my first attempt, I found a book called 'Little Quilts'. I made the main quilt in the book and did all of the wrong things. I quilted this by machine using no walking foot and white thread - yeeeeuuuck! It is great to look back on though and see what has changed. There are still some of my favourite fabrics in this quilt, even if they aren't particularly placed very cleverly....
This quilt sits on my chair in my bedroom.
Tracey Jung hooked me up with Carey Gollege who back then owned Honeysuckle Cottage which was run on a farm about 30 minutes drive from Coonamble. Carey was after someone to design exclusively for her, and Tracey thought that Graphic Design and Patchwork could be a good combination! I owe everything to her and Carey for taking me under their wings. They taught me everything I needed to know to get started. My earlier quilts were influenced by the techniques in the quilt above, with images that were pieced rather than appliqued. I guess things have changed a bit since then.....
It wasn't until I moved to Oberon that it all started to become a real business. I had been designing and sewing and writing up patterns for about 3 or 4 years for Carey, then decided to send some photos in to some magazines. What a buzz to have the editor of Aust Patchwork and Quilting phone me, followed up by Handmade and Country Threads! I remember getting my first order in the post for a kit and thought I had made it!!
So that's how I started. I hope you didn't fall asleep reading all this........ WAKE UP!
