If you’ve visited a quilt show in the last couple of years you can’t have failed to miss the rise in longarm quilting both from the quilts on display to the manufacturers demonstrating the latest machines. I first took notice of longarm quilting when I attended the National Quilt Championships at Sandown in Surrey; here one particular quilter, with her exquisite wholecloth cot quilts, has swept into prominence. The quilter in question is Joë Bennison. I met her at the end of last year to find out more about her and her quilting journey.
Joë has always sewn since as far back as she can remember but it wasn’t until her children left home to study that she found herself wondering ‘what can I do now?’. In her working life Joë had been an engineer, a design and technology technician and a food and textiles technology teacher. She was working as a reprographics manager in a local school when one February half term she decided she would like to make a quilt. A colleague at work was a quilter and she inspired Joë to have a go. Joë selected a mix of fabrics, bought a Jelly Roll quilt book and made her first quilt in a week! She was hooked. Joë showed me a couple of her early quilts and I was really surprised to see that there was very little quilting – maybe there was hope for me yet! A bargello quilt was beautifully pieced with basic straight line quilting and one titled ‘Fairytale Lane’, a pattern by Tula Pink, had slightly more complicated quilting on it but nothing like her longarm quilting. Joë like all of us had started her quilting journey using a basic domestic machine but she readily admitted that it was such hard work trying to quilt Fairytale Lane that it put her off.
Joë wanted to know more about what could be achieved with patchwork and quilting and whilst surfing the internet she came across the QuiltCon lectures of Angela Walters and Jacquie Gering. In Angela’s lecture she was discussing longarm quilting and her passion for this process grabbed Joë’s attention, it was that light bulb moment; she had found the particular area of quilting she wanted to explore further. Jacquie’s lecture discussed the emotion that is involved in quilting and this resonated with Joë. This ‘purpose’ has been at the heart of her quilting ever since.
This story is from the March 2017 edition of Patchwork and Quilting.
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This story is from the March 2017 edition of Patchwork and Quilting.
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S&B – Excellence And Diversity
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Meet A Quilter Joë Bennison
If you’ve visited a quilt show in the last couple of years you can’t have failed to miss the rise in longarm quilting both from the quilts on display to the manufacturers demonstrating the latest machines. I first took notice of longarm quilting when I attended the National Quilt Championships at Sandown in Surrey; here one particular quilter, with her exquisite wholecloth cot quilts, has swept into prominence. The quilter in question is Joë Bennison. I met her at the end of last year to find out more about her and her quilting journey.
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