Thoughts and Stitches from Charlotte’s Studio March 2022

Thoughts

Our Greymouth adventure has been and gone and is a whirlwind memory of wild stony beaches, deep green bush and lots and lots of house renovations! We spent ten months living and exploring in the South Island. We experienced real Westcoast rain, enjoyed South Island snow sports, made new friends and I saw birds I’d never seen before.

We are now back in Northland and it really did feel like a homecoming. Have you ever felt that you’ve had to leave and come back to fully realise where home is? I love the South Island, and I want to spend more time there, but now, having spent time away, I can truly acknowledge my deep ties to Northland. It really is home.

Once again, resettling is an awkward process, compounded by the fact that we may move again shortly! But not far this time. Just to one of the most beautiful beaches Northland has to offer. Hopefully in a couple of weeks time, my family becomes the new caretakers for a farm campground called Elliot’s Bay. There’s a picture of it below to whet your appetite for the sort of photos I might be able to share in future.

How do you settle in to a new place? What is your process for putting down roots and refinding your routines and creative mojo? I love the saying, ‘bloom where you are planted,’ but the reality of living that is harder than just writing it down.

Stitches

Coming back to my Northland house meant coming back to my dye studio! I have a fabulous long stainless steel bench and sink set up on my covered back deck (another thing I’ll miss when moving) and the weather, although beginning to show the first hints of Autumn, is still plenty warm for dyeing.

I’ve been working on creating a dye colour chart for myself. Lots of tedious work, but an invaluable reference. The best part about it is playing with the swatches after they are rinsed and dried. As a friend said, “It’s like all my childhood crayon box dreams come true!”

I’ve also been dyeing embroidery thread and upcycling unwanted textiles by giving them new life with dye. I really want to play my part in helping reduce our global textile waste. It’s a bit scary to know that it takes up to 2700 litres of water to make a cotton shirt, and that the volume of clothing Americans throw away each year has more than doubled in the last two decades (and I’m quite sure that extrapolates to Kiwis too.) But what a quandary, I love dyeing beautiful fabric and using it to make beautiful textile art, and I don’t want to stop! Solution – use unwanted, pre-loved textiles whenever I can. There are some beautiful cotton and linen fabrics out there just waiting to be shown a little love with a new colour.

I also want to help mindful stitchers create beautiful, conscientious work. So if you love the beauty and individuality of stitching with one-of-a-kind hand-dyed threads and fabrics, watch this space, inspiration bundles will be coming soon!

And for those of you lovely readers who don’t stitch, but who love the idea of ethical handmade textile art and utility pieces, there will be something for you too.


I must have been feeling the need for colour in my life recently. For as well as dyeing up a colourful storm, I’ve been using a rainbow in my sewing.

Below is a 55 inch (140 cm) square quilt made from one upsized log cabin block. This was a commission quilt and was fun to construct and fun to quilt. I used a different quilting pattern in each bar of the quilt and kept them quite loose and playful, to keep the quilt cuddly and to match the bright, playful colours.

Sometimes, simple really is the best.


(I’m a bit of a bird freak, so every newsletter I intend to profile one of NZ’s cool, unique, special, wondrous, fabulous birds)

This newsletter is brought to you by…

The white-faced heron or mataku moana in te reo Māori.

  • generation baby boomer
  • thinking about taking voice lessons
  • gets dressed up for the wedding season

The white-faced heron is our most common heron, despite only arriving here in the 1940’s. It self-introduced from Australia and from the 1950’s began breeding up. You will see them gracefully stalking wetlands, wet pasturelands, mudflats and shorelines, hunting for fish, crabs, insects and frogs. They’ll even take mice and lizards with their lightening fast dart and grab technique.

White-faced herons have a graceful flight but are severely lacking in the song department. Their harsh croak, usually when they are flying, is quite startling to hear if you’re not expecting it (imagine a pterodactyl.) They are beautiful birds with grey-blue feathers, white faces and yellow legs. In the photo above, this heron is in breeding plumage and you can see the long thin nuptial plumes (what a cool name!) over the back.

They like to nest in really tall trees like pines or macrocarpas and if you’ve ever seen the relatively loose platforms they make, it’s a wonder any chicks (usually two per brood) make it to adulthood instead of plunging to an early grave.

If you know my work, you’ll know they feature heavily. I see them a lot in Northland and I saw them frequently down in Greymouth too. I think I’m drawn to them because they have such a pleasing shape in both flight and resting. They fit well with a lot of my coastal or water themed work.

Below is a photo of ‘Early Morning Fishing’ (SOLD), which I’m pleased to announce has been accepted for publication in an upcoming book by Martha Sielman, executive director of Studio Art Quilt Associates, all about quilt artists inspired by birds!

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