Moderator note: Every Featurer starts with a list of points to get the writing juices flowing for a FF (Friday Feature) post. These points are in bold below.
Hi, I’m Brenda Suderman from Winnipeg, Manitoba. I blog at http://scrapsandstrings.blogspot.com
About
me: I’m a journalist for my local newspaper, a part-time graduate
student currently writing an MA thesis, and I’m also a quilt maker who
writes with fabric. I’ve made nearly a dozen word quilts, using the
free-pieced techniques developed by Tonya Ricucci in Word Play Quilts. I
also make art quilts, bed quilts, baby quilts, and wall quilts, mostly
from scraps. I started blogging four years ago after joining some group
blogs, and now I’m part of a dozen different blogs, some more active
than others.
I also run a group blog where we share our quilts made from strings, and we’re also making one together. Check us out over at http://stringthingalong.blogspot.com
About
my quilting: I’m a scrap quilter partially because of where I live. In
Winnipeg, we have a couple of small quilt shops, and several discount
fabric stores. I love shopping the sale bins, but I also get a thrill
when someone hands me a bag of scraps. For years, I’ve been playing with
scraps from my mother, from friends, and selvages mailed to me by
quilters I’ve met online.
I’ve
only been making quilts for the past eight years, although I’ve been a
sewer for all of my life. I started off with making clothes for my dolls
and going on to make my own clothes and those of my two sons, including
outerwear. My mother has been a quilt maker and
quilting teaching for three decades, and for years I was her cheerleader
and critic. I took the plunge into serious quilt making when my sons
didn’t want to wear homemade clothes anymore. When they were in
elementary school, I made a quilt with their class every year and in
2007, I made an 11 foot wall quilt with 150 people in my church. They
each made a square and I put them together for a permanent installation
celebrating the 50th anniversary of my church. I love making group
quilts, and right now I’m puzzling together 50 plus B blocks fellow
bloggers sent me for a recent big birthday. (I called the project
Brenda’s Big B Birthday Bee and you can find the tutorial and
explanation here. (link to
http://scrapsandstrings.blogspot.ca/2011/03/brendas-big-b-birthday-bee.html)
Highlights of the past year: More recently, I’ve been making quilts for Alzheimer Art Quilts Initiative (www.alzquilts.org)
and this past year, one of my little quilts made from teeny triangles
sent to me by a blogging friend was purchased by an Alzheimer’s
researcher, who received a grant from AAQI. After 25 years of having my
words published, I’m about to have my first quilt published in a
friend’s book to be released later this year. In the past year, I’ve
worked to improve my free motion quilting skills and I’m proud of the
fact that I can do feathers. I used to be exclusively a hand quilter,
but I bought a new sewing machine 18 months ago that sews like the wind
and does well with free motion quilting.
What’s
next? I’m plotting out ways to push the boundaries of writing on
quilts, writing with quilts, and practicing the craft of slow writing
with fabric. Since I have to write quickly and to deadline for my
professional life, it’s a huge contrast to deliberately make the
components of each letter with another piece of fabric, then piece the
letters together to make a word, and put the words together to make a
sentence. I’m also planning to use more found fabric, like old linen
calendar towels, to make quilts. Just this week I received a bag
containing a friend’s silk bridesmaid dress she no longer wanted to
wear, and a beautiful green sari embossed with silk. I’m thinking of
cutting up the sari and sending it to some blogging friends and together
we can incorporate them into our quilts.
What
have you always dreamed of doing? Since I’m a writer and a quilter, the
obvious answer would be to write a quilting book, but that dream will
have to stay on the back burner until I finish my thesis (on an entirely
non-fabric topic) this year. At this stage in my life, I can only
handle one big writing project at a time. I’m also keen about
introducing non-sewers to the joys of working with needle and thread. I
loved sewing with the elementary school students, and I’d like to get back to teaching them to sew and quilt.
