Life Stories in Appliqué

“What are you doing?” I asked my young son.

“I’m cutting up paper to make a book,” he dutifully replied.

“Sweetie, those are my Fiskars!”

He giggled and looked up at me. “You mean scissors?”

“My fabric scissors darling, see it says Fiskars on the side.”

“They work pretty well on paper, Mummy.” He could not see my discomfort as each squeeze of the handles surely were dulling them beyond use for my cherished fabric. It didn’t affect them at all, of course, but I reserved my best scissors for my passion.

I’d collected my precious material over a lifetime, some inherited from my mother, and all colour-coded in separate bins. My palette of stories and memories; my grandmother’s dress, my baby’s leggings, the curtains from our first house.  

Appliquéd together they created a visual story with some history that only I would know, but to me, it gave my piece a living energy imprint.

My love affair with fabric began when I was a young child, accompanying my mother to the fabric store. I loved the colourful rolls of fabric piled up high. I loved the grandmotherly smell of the shop too and would lose myself in the aisles draping myself with anything befitting a princess.  

Mom kept her collection in a big antique trunk and when she sewed, still making many of our clothes back then, I loved going through all the different material.

She had made all of our Christmas stockings out of red felt with white letters to look like icicles spelling out each of our names. When I birthed my first baby I decided to carry on the tradition following her style. My stocking definitely shows its age, but she started a tradition that will live on with each new family member be it human or creature.

Our firstborn we named Forrest, so naturally, I chose a Christmas forest theme. I carried on that theme for the whole family and made my husband, an avid runner, one with him running with Forrest’s decorated pine trees in the background. When our second son, Roam, joined us, I made roaming buffalo decked out for Christmas in the field in front of Forrest’s trees. 

I love the ritual every year of hanging the stockings and it fills me with joy that my family treasures them as much as I always have.  

It was in my early twenties when I went to a quilting class and made my first quilt, a Christmas present for my sister when my love affair with fabric was re-ignited. I continued making quilts with great intentions but filled with frustration trying to make all the points match up.

When I attended a gigantic quilting exposition it was there I discovered that many people’s points didn’t meet, but it never detracted from the bigger picture. It was there that my ideas of appliqué expanded into fabulous art work and very unique quilts.  

It was like painting with fabric as the medium. I wasn’t into the cutesy cotton prints often reserved for quilt making, much preferring to use different textures and prints of upholstery fabric. I would spend hours in a fabric store inspired by the multitude of different patterns, and textures. The fabrics made it easy to visualise each one creating a great sky, stone wall, or a river.

I’d choose a complimentary backing fabric and layout the general size. Then with my design in mind, I’d gleefully pull a variety of multi-coloured possibilities from my palette of bins. I’d lay them out where I thought they may end up to see how they all worked together until I was satisfied with the kaleidoscope of what would eventually evolve into my vision.

With wild abandon using my trusty fabric-only Fiskars, I would cut into a pristine piece of cloth, twisting and turning my scissors and fabric to complete the desired shape.

My mother-in-law witnessed this one evening and she couldn’t believe I would randomly slice into the fabric without sketching it first. I had a vision in my mind and I loved working freestyle, no pattern, structure, rules or measurements. I could imagine the collage of material forming into the desired shapes.

“What if you get it wrong? You’ll be wasting all that material,” she exclaimed. I could understand her point of view growing up in the war when everything was rationed.

“Don’t worry, I save all the scraps because I never know when I’ll need a smaller piece of something,” I assured her. I showed her the plastic bags in each bin that were filled with scraps of the same colours.

Creating an appliqué was like a dance, it had to flow naturally from the heart. Sometimes it was as if my scissors had magic powers. I loved how sharp they were even to the very tip so if I was snipping the smallest piece it would be exact. They were the brush to my palette of fabric colours.

My first appliqué was the living room scene, for my husband, of our first Christmas together in our house. Many years later when my eldest son bought his first place, I turned that appliqué scene into a pillow, using parts of his baby leggings as the backing, so he could bring a little bit of home into his new one.

Before he was born I made my first appliqué baby quilt. I copied a sweet greeting card with a bunny sitting in a field of daffodils. I adored making a pale blue, plaid sky relishing in deep satisfaction how I could so easily get away with that in the world of material. It is still in perfect condition and although he may not remember it, I have it carefully packed away to pass on to his first child when that day comes.  

By the time our second son was due, I started a jungle scene taken from a photo of a jaguar hanging from a tree in National Geographic magazine. I got as far as cutting most of the main shapes and pinning them together. The demands of motherhood didn’t allow for the necessary extra time it takes to be creative.

But when that same baby was graduating from university, after travelling to the Amazon jungle in Peru with me, I decided the perfect graduation gift would be to finally finish his jungle baby quilt. How did I know that this particular son would actually have an experience in the jungle?

At 23 years old, I thought it was safe enough to add buttons and other accoutrements that would otherwise be a choking hazard for a baby. Because he had met and worked with Peruvian shamans on our travels I used a hand-sewn piece of material from the Shipibo tribe as the backing. That in itself tells its own story.

The beauty of this quilt is the personal symbolism that my son Roam understands even though jaguars, lions and elephants are probably not in the same jungle. His girlfriend asked how long it took me to make and I said, “Twenty-three years!”

Appliqué brings memories to life to pass down to future generations, snuggled in a quilt or celebrating any occasion.  My most recent project was adding the newest member of our family, Whiskey, to the Christmas stockings. A big, beautiful golden retriever. His parents said it was by far, the best gift that year.