Welcome to Maxine’s quilts, each one is original, no two are alike and they are usually inspired by a single piece of fabric. Colour, print pattern and texture drive how the project evolves while taking special care to select fabrics that are of good quality, made from natural fibres and are readily available. The source of the fabric could be from a favourite garment, end of bolt pieces, gifts of scraps or something that ‘just belongs’. I rarely chain stitch pieces or work in full strips as the goal of my products are to use materials that are readily available. Cutting the squares individually helps to create a palette from which I can pick and choose for each quilt block. I’m sure you can imagine that this process is much more time consuming than using a quilt pattern. It’s like a puzzle or math challenge to figure out how I can use what I have on hand therefore making each of my quilts from scratch.
Are my quilts ‘traditional’? I don’t remember calling them quilts as a child, to me they were blankets. Most people used woven 100 % wool as their blanket but I was allergic to wool so my blanket was basically a ‘quilt’. To me is a blankie or quilt is like a warm hug that is especially comforting when the quilt comes off the clothes line and you breathe in the smell of the fresh air and 100% cotton. The quilts that I remember are the ones that were fairly heavy, cozy and when tucked in at night made me feel cuddled and safe. Everyone in my family has used a sewing machine at least once in their life and the most common machine was a Singer and they rarely broke down even though it was used by many people. I think a ‘traditional’ is more likely to refer to whatever makes it special to the owner.
Here are a few examples of what may have been called traditional quilts in the Bay of Islands. NL:
This one is a 100 year old hand sewn and hand-tied made from old sheets, clothing and/or curtains with old sheets or wool blankets as batting
This is a hand-tied scrappy quilt machine pieced together with leftover fabric, old sheets, curtains with polyester fibre batting. These started with the introduction of synthetic fibres and electric sewing machines.
Current Scrappy and Long-Arm Quilted machine pieced from commercial printed scrap fabric with 100% cotton batting and locally long arm-quilted.
