CREATIVE CORNER l sustainable quilting
A bitmore:
JoAveryhasbeen
quiltingfor 30 years
andwritinghercraft
blogfora wholedecade.
Sherunsherownfabric
shop,myBearpaw,in
Edinburghandonline,
aswellasteachinga
rangeof workshops
andorganisingannual
sewingretreats.
http://www.mybearpaw.com
@mybearpaw
joaverystitchneed to act as fast as possible to find greener alternatives
but this must be sustainably managed to protect life and
livelihoods. It’s a fine balancing act and I can’t promise
that I have all the answers.
But I will be trying to use up more of the fabric I
already own and I’m also attempting to slow down my
creating by making quilts, and therefore quilt patterns,
with more content and more hand stitching. I always
say that quilting is as much about the journey as the
destination and there is nothing wrong in taking a whole
year to make a beautiful heirloom quilt rather than
finishing something quick and easy in a weekend.The power of stitches
Last year our Edinburgh Modern Quilt Guild president,
Mags Scammell, set our group a challenge to each make
a message quilt about something we really believed in.
I was very pleased to see how many of our members
used this challenge to express their concerns for
environmental issues. Cathlene Eland’s Life Destroys
Life depicts the Earth’s major landmasses in 2040, after
an increase of global temperatures of 4 /degrees/ C,
which has resulted in the sea ice melting. Mags herself
chose the problem of plastic for her protest quilt Is This
Fergus’s Future?, which shows her grandson finding a
pile of real plastic under a wave on the beach.
I took this opportunity to make my first new Green
Quilt of the millennia, Nature Needs Our Help. I chose
to depict leaves in distress, torn and disintegrating to
represent Mother Nature in trouble. But these leaves
are being sewn back together by quilters, stitching
patchwork leaves with love and healing. I feel it’s very
important that we retain hope for the future and a
belief in our power to improve our world through
small individual actions. After all there is much to be
commended in our chosen pastime, we make things
ourselves rather than just consuming them, and those
things are useful and long lasting. If all else fails we
can go back to the thrifty origins of our craft and start
making quilts from recycled fabric again, which is
obviously the ultimate Green Quilt!Life Destroys Life by Cathlene Eland – one of the
Edinburgh MQG ‘Chair’s Challenge’ quilts
Left, Aurifil Plastic
Neutral badge – some
craft industry companies
are making changes for
the betterFor more information on Jo’s retreats, visit
http://www.stitchgathering.co.uk and http://www.thethreadhouse.co.uk