Getting Cosy with Designers – Sarah Fielke and Michelle Ridgway
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SARAH FIELKE
Website: www.sarahfielke.com
“Quilting is my blessing and my curse. I love my quilting job with all my heart, but it’s also just that – a job – and some days I really don’t want to go to work!”
MY STYLE IS:
“I don’t like to put a name to what I do. I think there’s too much importance placed on whether people are ‘traditional quilters’ or ‘modern quilters’ or ‘art quilters’. I’m a quilter, and I love to quilt. My style has developed over time, but my quilts have always had the same ‘flavour’, right from the first one.”
THINGS THAT GO OUCH IN THE NIGHT!
“My favourite funny stitching story is when I made a quilt for my best friend’s 21st many moons ago. Several years later, she and her fiancé were in an … ahem … compromising position when, suddenly, he screeched and leapt out of bed. Seems my needle had been lurking in the quilt for four years, just waiting to drive itself into his knee at the wrong moment.”
Make a quilt with a positive message with Sarah Fielke’s pattern
PARENTAL GUIDANCE
“When I was a child, I had a tiny pink sewing machine that my mum bought me in New York. She used to let me take all her scraps and make dresses for my Barbies and teddies. She’d look at the front of my stitching and say how beautiful it was, and then turn it over to the messy back and say, ‘Pull it all out’.”
MICHELLE RIDGWAY
RAG-TAG STITCHIN’
Blog: michelleridgwaydesigns1.blogspot.com
“I stitch every day, mostly from an old brown chair that you’d call ‘very comfortable’.”
MY STYLE IS:
“I’m mainly a hand stitcher, and I prefer softer vintage styles. I adore needleturn appliqué and stitchery, so if I have a project that features both, I am extremely happy.”
SO THERE!!!!
“My old Home Economics teacher told me I was the most hopeless student she’d ever come across in the sewing department. My grandmother taught me embroidery as an antidote to that teacher’s comments.” [Ed note: Shows what that teacher knew – Michelle’s work is superb.]
Create Michelle Ridgway’s Pears & Plates Quilt
A FUNNY THING HAPPENED …
“I once stitched an appliqué block to my skirt while I was watching my daughter compete in a ballet competition, and, as the room cleared at the end of the session, I had to walk out like that until I could find a seat outside to unpick it.”