I have always had a love of creating and learned how to sew by hand in my early teens. My Mother was an artist and I grew up talking about colour with her. At school I was lucky enough to try my hand at many crafts including weaving, clay work, enamelling and leatherwork. I also did knitting, painting and embroidery but then I discovered quilting in the early 1990’s when I walked into a quilt shop looking for a frame for a cross stitch I had just completed. All the beautiful fabrics in that shop drew me in and I signed up for my first class straight away, which was a hand pieced and quilted sampler quilt.

I finally opened Lotus Fabrics in 2011 and became a Quiltworx Certified Shop. I specialise in Batiks and hand dyed fabrics, a technique I discovered at the age of 13 when we had a family trip to South-east Asia. I purchased my first piece of Batik then and still have it today – un-cut and often admired!

This year (2017) things have changed for me again – my fabrics are now at Thorpe & Co Sewing Machines in Boolaroo (Newcastle) and I have become a Certified Instructor with Quiltworx. I am teaching at Thorpes and Terrace Quilting and am available to teach at any quilting group around Australia.

I love helping my students choose colours and fabrics for their quilts and then being able to teach them all the Quiltworx designs and techniques. It’s an absolute joy to watch all these great quilts come together in so many different colour ways and to see the enormous sense of satisfaction on the faces of my students.

Click on the images below to find Louise’s gallery of quilts on Facebook!