I am participating in an instagram sharing called IGQuiltFest2023 with a different prompt for the sharing for each day. I am late to the show but will participate as I can.
The prompt for the 5th day is why do I quilt? There are so many way that I can answer that. I have a life long love of fabrics from the first time at age 5 that I walked into my grandfather's sewing room and saw the black treadle machine and watched him sew and saw the pile of fabrics sitting on the chair next to him. My first trip also at age 5 to the Indian market in Pretoria, the sari fabrics, the beads, the colors all spoke to me.
My lifelong adventure with the sewing machine began then and hasn't stopped since. I sewed clothes for many years and even studied fashion design. My first quilt I sewed for a wedding gift. A door opened, a new way for me to interpret fabric.
I explored the world of quilting as I do everything else, diving deep into it. Researched techniques, experimented. I sewed many classical quilts, learning as many techniques as I could but something was missing. My home is full of practical quilts that are used every day and I still make some like that. But I dscovered that classical quilting is not for me. So I continued experimenting.
I have been teaching sewing to children and adults for many years. One of the things that I teach them is to do patchwork quilting. They love it. They create original quilted patchwork fabrics and then from that create products. That alone is a reason to quilt.
In addition to that after much trial and error I found myself moving away from classical quilting to the abstract. It is two fold, I develop techniques to create art and use only upcycled fabrics for that in all shapes and sizes. I am in a constant search for more patchwork and quilting techniques for using up the smallest of pieces of fabric. It is a challenge and a joy to create a new technique.
