My April Star : Natima

I have made some wonderful friends from Down Under. I have found that Australian people are as friendly, funny, and warm as the Irish. I am privileged to have become friends with my April Star, named Natima. She is super talented, and she is as beautiful on the inside as she is on the outside. You can visit her blog at http://notjustnat.blogspot.com/, but I know you will enjoy getting to know her through her wonderful interview. Thanks Nat for being my friend, and here is Her April Interview:

Interview for April

· A Bit About Me- Let’s start from the beginning. I was born in a country town in Thailand and exactly 30 years this year that I left my country of birth where I’ve met my husband Tom. We were married for 6 years by the time we left. I didn’t know at the time that it would be a trip of my life. We have since lived in 7 countries and 2 of those countries we lived in twice. I didn’t have a trained profession as such, but being a creative person I have adopts and learned to take on any professional jobs wherever we lived. I did graduate from a high fashion/dressmaking school in Bangkok and partly completed a secretarial school again in Bangkok. Tom and I had our own language school in Bangkok for 4 years and I was managing it. When we arrived in Oxford, UK I found job sewing for a high fashion sewing business and I was paid top wage at the time because I could fitted zippers on to dresses. When we lived in Libya I was working as a purchasing assistant because I know how to touch typing 45 words per minute. Job was easier to get in Libya because there weren’t many locals who know how to type. The next 10 years I was at home raising my two lovely children. I have a daughter and a son and I just become a grandma on January 9th. 2009. Of course having children didn’t make us stay in one place. We moved 7 more times to where we are now in the beautiful Melbourne, Australia. How do I get into quilting? I have always sewed since the young age. My grandmother gave me my first Singer treadle sewing machine when I was a teenager. I made clothes for my dolls, for myself and my husband. I took an evening course in tailoring while I studied dressmaking. When my son was a baby I started small projects of cross stitch. From the small cross stitch I added patches around it and appliqué onto t-shirts. Friends who saw them would say. Why don’t you sell them at craft market? I did just that, I would cross stitch when my baby was as sleep or after he went to bed. I made many different designs using Liberty prints to make patchwork out of them. My t-shirts sold like hot cakes. Luckily the market was on only once a month. I remembered worked myself to the ground try to meet the demand. In the end we moved again, thanks goodness. Needless to say, I never did pick up that profession ever again. When we moved to Australia the first time I received a parcel supposed to be for my neighbour. The parcel contained fabrics so I took it over to next door and when Karen opened the front door I could see a beautiful quilt hanging in the hall way. She told me she was a quilter and after that I became her faithful student and neighbour. I was a fast learner so I quickly learned all the quilting techniques. The results of wanting to learn everything I now have countless UFOs.
When we moved to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates I was asked to teach hand appliqué and crazy quilt. I am proud to say that I took crazy quilt to the UAE because before I got there no quilters had used non cotton fabrics for quilting. I introduced them to used non cotton fabrics in crazy quilts and the UAE became heaven to all quilters after that. Teaching was the best thing for my life development. I now realized that I love teaching, I love share my skills to others. I don’t teach for money I just want to pass on my skills to share as long as people appreciate what I have given them. What kind of quilting to I like? Up until now I have made all kind of quilts. I have tried them all, some finished and some in the UFOs piles, but I am now more and more drawn to handmade quilts, hand embroidery and hand stitching. These days I am not only a quilter, I am a basket weaver and handmade book as well. I don’t have time to do everything, but I love them all.

· What Inspires Me: Recycled materials, such as old clothes? Things I found in opportunity shops that I could re-purpose like old woollen jumpers to make into felted bags. Woollen skirts to make into felted fabric. Old books can be use for collage or altered books. Nylon rope found on the beaches can be stitch into baskets. All the above inspires me these days.


· What I Love to Do the Most Creatively: I am most creative when I travel. I would take plain fabrics and lot of hand dyed threads. I can then create designs and stitch whatever I feel like as the time. I would copy designs from drawings inside ancient temples, churches, mosques and palaces. These days I would take my handmade book to keep journal when I travels as well.

· My Favourite Fabric and Designs At the moment my favourite designs and fabric would be Blackbird-designs by Barb Adams and Alma Allen. I like their techniques of fabric over dyed before they use in quilts. I also like their quirky designs of quilts and cross stitch. Here is their web site http://www.dashdist.com/blackbird.html


· UFO I Intend to Finish First: I am about to put together a top I have been working on for 4 years and all blocks were from used clothing. There are lot of blocks to sew together. It will be worth it at the end. I intend to finish this quilt first.

· What’s on the Design Wall Now: A hand piecing fan blocks, scrap quilt using men shirts and my son’s wedding quilt.

· Who Would I Love to Meet: I would like to meet my granddaughter and my kids? They live quite far away from us; meeting up with them would be a treasure.


· If I Had One Wish: I would like a home near the sea that I can hear water lapping when I wake up each morning and my friends all around me.


· Plans for the Future: To have more time to spend stitching, basket weaving, creating handmade books and creating mixed media projects of some sort and teaching others to sew.

I am attaching some photos of my t-shirt creation and my earlier designs on t-shirt.

Finally, here are my trips to India and Egypt in October, 2008.