Sew Inspirational

Leesa Siegele

Lessa has been actively involved in the Quilters Guild of South Australia since its inception in 1984. As a well known quilt maker, teacher and judge, she regularly travels throughout Australia teaching machine-piecing and traditional quilting. She has also taught in the USA and New Zealand. In 2002 she was awarded an OAM in the Queen’s Birthday honours for services to the art of quiltmaking and in 2007 was presented with the Rajah Award at AQC for her outstanding contribution to Australian quilting.

Christine Mitchell - Felter

It is always intriguing to trace back to the moment when inspiration first hits and passion first flairs. Many of us can not actually remember when we first started to love our particular craft as we simply learnt at our mother’s knee or simply flowed effortlessly into a life of creativity, surrounded by creative people. But Christine Mitchell can well remember the events that led to the day she discovered a love of felting that would develop to a stage which would direct her future.

Christine had always had an unfounded yearning to visit the Faulklin Islands, a tiny British colony clustered at the bottom of South America, at the foot of Argentina. Living in northern New South Wales, Australia, with her eight children, she knew little about the islands except that they had been in conflict with Argentina 25 years earlier and had fought stoically to retain their British heritage and culture. But when her husband was offered a two year contract to work in the Faulklins Christine felt an immediate draw on her heart strings and set off on what was to become a five year adventure in many ways.

Christine found herself living in the isolated village of Goose Green Farm, infamous for the fierce battle and siege of Goose Green, during the British / Argentinean war. She met a hard-working, strong, independent and resilient population with a combined heritage of the many seafaring nations that had passed its shores, rounding the Horn. Few roads or mod-cons and most importantly NO sewing machines or fabrics Christine, originally an award winning dressmaker, floundered a little.

But one of the most abundant commodities available in the Faulklins was sheep and from those hardy breed came beautiful, world-class wool, which formed the backbone of an industrious cottage industry of spinners, weavers and knitters. Early in her adventure Christine was invited to attend a workshop with a visiting New Zealand felter and instantly the love affair with felting began and six years later Christine Mitchell has become a reknowned felter, in her own right.

During her years in the Faulklins Christine opened a store to sell the yarns and crafts of the Faulklins to the boat loads of passing tourists. During the wet and windy winters Christine and the other islanders worked tirelessly to craft beautiful garments, accessories and home furnishings to sell during the short summer invasion of tourists who came in the non-stop flow of cruise liners. Christine mastered her craft with long winters of experimentation, creativity and experience.

Christine Mitchell returned to Australia in 2006 to help her daughter, Barbie Davis, open her new retail store. Barbie owns and manages a fabric and sewing machine dealership, ‘Material Needs’ in Grafton NSW, specializing in patchwork and dressmaking. Christine teaches felting, dressmaking and patchwork.

You can contact Christine Mitchell at
‘Material Needs’ on:T: 02 6643 5366

Ken Smith, B.A.

One of Australia’s leading textile artists, Ken was featured in Kristen Dibbs’s 1998 book “Machine Embroidery: Inspirations from Australian Artists”. As a freelance tutor of Creative Machine Embroidery and Silk Painting, he has taught for government-funded and private arts organizations, for businesses and for private bodies. He is in wide demand as a tutor in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the USA.

Queensland-born and educated, Ken trained as a secondary school teacher, obtaining a Teaching Diploma and a B.A. degree. His major was French Language and Literature. After twenty-five years’ teaching experience, twenty-two of them in England, he resigned and returned to Australia to pursue his interest in textile art.

Ken has been, and continues to be, a collector: antiques (boxes, glass, ivory, buttons and buckles, lace (hand-made), linen, needlework tools and accessories, woodworking tools, feather trims, leather and skins, costume, sentimental jewellery) and books on crafts (including those which he never intends to practise), art, and social history.

He loves theatre, gardening, reading, and cryptic crosswords. He enjoys cooking – principally because he enjoys eating. However, his exercise of his principal artistic passion, FME (Free Machine Embroidery), means that he has little time or energy to indulge in the others. FME-deprivation tends to lead swiftly to unpleasant withdrawal symptoms. These include severe fidgeting and thumb-twiddling (no, seriously) – or FME-ing in the sleep, which is repetitive, exhausting, and, unfortunately, not often productive.

He has recently moved to rural Tasmania.

WEBSITE: www.bennett-smith.com