Maria Michaels Designs

August Newsletter

Our News

Last month I mentioned that we were in the process of setting up to accept credit cards using 2Checkout (2CO) for credit card payments. All of our quilt patterns can now be purchased via credit card and it is working out very well indeed. The credit cards are accepted through 2CO and the patterns are mailed or emailed by us.

Only one of our needlework patterns is ready for credit card purchase. The rest will be by the time our next newsletter is published, if not before.

Patterns can still be ordered through PayPal for those who prefer to use it, or by cheque or money order. Please see our Order page for details.

Featured Quilter - Eldrid Røyset Førde

Eldrid sewing on the border of Kameleon Quilt #2

Meet Eldrid Røyset Førde - a quilter, teacher, and pattern designer who lives on a small island on the west coast of Norway. Norway, a country in the north-west corner of Europe, has a rugged coastline with many small islands and long, deep fjords which are visited by thousands of tourists every year. Most of the country consists of mountains and woods, with a very small area suitable for agriculture. Tall, steep mountainsides combined with a rainy climate are perfect for producing hydro-electricity, and many energy-producing plants have been built along its fjords. Its position on the edge of a very productive corner of the Atlantic fisheries has made the fishing industry a very important part of the country's economy. Its export of fish and fish-related products is second only to its export of oil and gas, a resource discovered only about 30 years ago. Eldrid's small island is very typical of Norway with lots of mountains, and only a narrow strip of land, or in some areas no strip at all, between mountain and sea where the people live. She lives in a small community of 1800 persons on two small adjacent islands. The islands are connected by a bridge. Hers is a small community where most everyone knows everybody else. As  Eldrid says, the ones who have to know everybody, as well as where they live, are the postal workers and the taxi drivers. Their roads have no names, and their houses have no numbers, which accounts for their short addresses. A typical address for the island includes a person's first name, surname, postal code, and the name of the nearest village with a post office. If mailed from abroad, it would also include the name of the country. A fictitious example is:

Eldrid has created a wonderful, new, unique, quilt style which she has aptly named Kameleon Quilts. Quilters will love making her designs for many reasons, but especially because of the magic achieved by flipping and buttoning the 3D flaps. Eldrid says that on some quilts there are millions of possible combinations. One example is shown below.
 

Eldrid grew up in the 1950s when money was scarce and  rationing and import restrictions were still in effect after World War II. At that time mothers had to work hard to make ends meet, including making most, if not all, of the family's clothes. "So my mother was sewing, knitting, weaving, crocheting, embroidering  etc, and we (girls) were expected to learn these skills as well," she explains. She learned to knit at an early age, which provided something to do during the long, dark winter evenings.

"I did not sew very much until long after I left home. My mother was a 'professional,' having worked at a textile factory before she married, so I got the impression that nothing I sewed was quite good enough. There would always be a crooked seam, a collar that was not quite symmetrical, etc. I know she meant well, and wanted to teach me the correct way, but at that age it had a negative effect. It turned me away from sewing - but luckily, only for a while."

"It was not till I married and we were expecting our first child that I took up sewing again. At that time we lived close to a factory outlet where I could get cheap remnants of fabric suitable for baby clothes, so I made lots of shirts and other baby clothes, even a christening gown. This was fabric which  I could afford to make mistakes with, and besides, now it was I who decided for myself if the seams were good enough or not - and they did get better in time.”

In her teacher's college textile studies, Eldrid learned knitting and crocheting techniques, embroidery stitches, some leather work, how to draw and correct patterns for garments and garment sewing. Her classes worked with fabric paint and stamps. They learned tie dye and wax resist batik techniques, the different weaving patterns, how to do a warp from the beginning, and how to thread the loom to achieve the different weaving patterns. They used a variety of different threads, and made scarves.

Kameleon Quilt 2 on the design wall.

She says, "For some reason or other, hand woven scarves in different purple shades was all the rage here at the time, especially among university and college students. It made visitors from other countries wonder why everyone was wearing them, and if they had any special significance." Tablecloths, table runners, fabric for garments, simple pictorial motifs in double weave jacquard, many traditional kinds of  "åkle" (rugs sewn onto sheep skin for bedding) were all part of her school learning experience. Eldrid went on to write an article for the International Quilting Times which explained the "åkle" tradition and its comparison to quilts. She was also taught the simple gobelin technique for pictorial weaving in frames, weaving on small handheld looms used for long scarves or bands, and weaving bands using lots of square cardboard pieces with a hole in each corner through which the warp was threaded - an ancient method also used by the Vikings.

Her instructors introduced her to patchwork, but only the English-style hexagon hand piecing. Preferring to use her sewing machine, this approach did not appeal to Eldrid. However, patchwork was becoming very popular all around the world during the 1970s and 1980s. Log cabin quilts began appearing in magazines. She was tempted to try the technique using the fabric scraps saved  from years of garment sewing. She does not remember being familiar with the term "quilting" at that time - it was the patchwork aspect that appealed to her. She made a lap-sized quilt, and realizing that it needed some stitching to hold the three layers together, sewed seams that ran through the center of each block. But it was not until a year later, in 1986, that she realized she had been quilting. She happened to be in a shop which sold rotary cutters and mats, along with the first Norwegian book describing how to use them. She bought them, and was hooked.

Eldrid putting Kameleon Quilt 2 together.

Night and Day was Eldrid's first Kameleon Quilt. Having just heard about a contest involving the log cabin block (without having yet read the rules) she started thinking and planning. She realized that it would be necessary to come up with something special in order to attract attention. Having already done some 3D work earlier and having seen art quilts with 3D parts she thought about covering the block with some "loose parts" which could open up to reveal something underneath. Flower petals came to mind. Knowing that some flowers open up during the day and then close their petals at night, she thought about using starry fabric on the sides against the closed petals to represent the night. Eldrid explains, "At the same time I had the story of The Mousehole Cat on my mind (a very beautiful book by Antonia Barber and Nicola Bayley). It is about a cat that helped save a village from starvation and involved something called Stargazey Pie, which is made with sardines. The sardines peeped through the pie crust just as though they were looking at the stars."

Kameleon Quilt 3 in the sewing machine.

"I found this name quite inspiring and kept thinking of all sorts of ways to create or look at stars. It was the pie and pie shape which at last led me to the curved edges of the 3D triangles. Curved edges allow the block underneath to show through. I created a design that, with petals closed, made the blocks look like yellow stars at  night. With the petals open, the blocks look like green leaves during the day. I was really proud of myself for thinking up a quilt which could have two entirely different looks. That was as far as I got because the competition rules stated  that the log cabin blocks be plain with no embellishing. I had to rethink my strategies - but that is another story." Eldrid drafted her quilt on the computer, using QuiltPro. ("I love drawing by computer - just a click and there is a whole new colour in all the right patches! But no quilt program that I know of can actually flip triangles the way I want," she adds).  Unfortunately, soon after she began construction, her computer, including all the quilt drafts, was destroyed by lightning.

The idea of the 3D petals was too good to let die, so she drew the quilt from memory, changing the block from log cabin to a simpler shape.  "I had to start afresh." 

"It was not until I was joining the last rows of the top, the triangles wobbling here and there and everywhere while I was working, that I realized that the quilt could have more than the two looks I had planned. In fact, when I started thinking about how many there could be, I got completely lost. I asked an Internet acquaintance, who is both a quilter and a computing professor, to calculate the number of possible variations. She came up with a 19 digit number which I did not even know how to pronounce. What a surprise!!"

Eldrid used the same principle of the flipping triangles to create more designs. She named them Kameleon Quilts because, of course, the quilts can change their appearances.

Eldrid's  Kameleon Quilts have won many awards. Night and Day was juried into the First Horizon Exhibition which toured the UK and Belgium. It was voted Favourite Quilt  in both Brugge and York when the tour reached those cities. It also received an Honorable Mention at the Pacific International Quilt Festival. Night and Day has also been displayed throughout Scandinavia.

Kameleon Quilt 2 won first prize in a contest sponsored by the Norwegian magazine Familien, which made Eldrid quite happy. The prize was a 10-day trip to the Quilt Market in Houston and then on to Pennsylvania, both places she had long wanted to visit. Her husband accompanied her which, she says, was very handy. He carried all the heavy suitcases stuffed with new fabric she collected on the trip. "I have to mention that he actually likes going to shows and looking at the quilts," she adds. "He has become quite knowledgeable over the years. He even uses the correct quilty terms," says Eldrid.
 

Click here for page 2 of this Newsletter for more about Eldrid, for our book review, our question and answer section, and to see if you are a free pattern winner.

  Home | Quilt Patterns | About Us | Contact Us  | Gallery | Links and Web Rings

© 2002 - 2005 Maria Michaels Designs. All Rights Reserved