She only began quilting in 2002 and already Canberra’s Helen Godden has become a rising star of the international quilting world. While those who have toiled over needle, pin, machine and fat quarter for years might groan when they think of the success of this ‘newcomer’ - she had an online business up and running by 2003 and was being lauded at Houston by 2006 - don’t be too hard on yourself. In reality Helen has been making a living from her artistic talents for 25 years. It’s just that she’s finally found her ideal medium, the art quilt!
Conversation with Helen Godden is a little like being caught in a verbal washing machine: fast paced, invigorating, varied and a tiny bit overwhelming. This woman has energy and she appears to keep the pedal to the metal in all her pursuits whether they be designing, travelling and teaching, running her business, raising her daughter or, of course, creating art quilts.
“I think it’s unreasonable for a lot of quilters to compare their progress to mine,” says Helen. “After all I had a hand-painted garment business for 13 years, I’ve been a jewellery designer and I’ve always painted or created art in some way. When I came to quilting I basically had a huge backlog of designs or illustrations to draw on. It’s like I started with 50 possibilities from the get go.”
These modest clarifications aside, Helen is something of a wunderkind. She temporarily “retired” from the commercial side of art and fashion when she gave birth to her daughter, Ineka. Things went a little crazy at that point when her husband had a serious accident and Helen was required at his hospital bedside almost 24 hours a day. Her parents moved to Canberra to help care for eight-month-old Ineka and patchwork and quilting, via Helen’s mum, came along for the ride.
“I took Mum to a meeting of the Canberra Quilt Guild so she’d have the chance to make some friends in her new town,” explains Helen. “She’s a patchworker - all about precision and accuracy - and I started designing a few things for her. People assumed I knew how to sew. They were wrong.”
‘Native Birds and Flowers of Australia’, a stained glass quilt of 28 blocks, was the result of Helen and her mother’s first collaboration. The quilt won Viewer’s Choice ‘Best of Show’ at 2002 Canberra Quilter’s Guild exhibition and also went in the running for the ‘Best of Australia’ quilt. At another visit to a Canberra exhibition, once again with Helen escorting her mum more for moral support than anything, the younger woman saw someone doing a free motion demonstration. “I didn’t know a machine could do anything but go in a straight line,” Helen remembers. “I went up to the woman, who turned out to be Jenny Bowker (celebrated Australian quiltmaker), and asked her how it was done. She said, ‘Drop your standard foot, put the darning foot on and go!’”
Considering that in August of this year Helen Godden was busy being a guest in the internet ‘chatroom’ of Ricky Tims, one of the best know quilting names in the USA, one can’t help contemplating just what an amazing chain of events were set in motion by Jenny that day.
To list all the achievements of Helen to date in her quilting pursuits would take too long, suffice to say just some of her awards include the quilt called ‘Mekong Gold’ being awarded one of the top seven awards in ‘A World of Beauty’ - that of Maywood Studio’s ‘Master of Innovative Artistry’. Also in 2006, ‘Imaginasaurus’ was awarded runner up in Husqvarna VIKING ‘Imagine That!’International Masterpiece Exhibition; pretty impressive stuff.
More recently Helen has become involved in an inspiring and fascinating collaborative venture with fellow artists, Annette Hendricks of Chicago, USA, and Gail Thomas from Vernon, Canada. Their joint quilt - ‘The Three Sisters: A Tri-Nation Collaborative Quilt’ - was awarded first place in the Group category in ‘A World of Beauty’ IQA Quilt Festival Houston 2007.
This collaboration continues to build momentum with the trio of quilters being invited to join together at Ricky Tims’ studio earlier this year (an invitation unheard of in quilting circles) so they could commence work on their new quilt called ‘Seasonal Sisters’. (This quilt has now been accepted into the next Houston competition - one of only 380 in world selected.)
One thing the trio has in common is the fact that they see themselves as artists first and quilters second. “I can’t sew a straight seam to save myself and you can’t ask me to make a Flying Duck block or something like that,” says Helen. “My strengths as an artist lie with my design and line work abilities. I still work from rough sketches but, by translating the work into thread and fabric, I achieve the movement and energy in my work I could not in other mediums. Stitching, quilting... makes the art come to life.”
Always a clever and practical business woman Helen has a business selling appliqué designs, she enjoys sponsorship from major sewing machine brands, she teaches and, for a real first, she has just launched a jigsaw puzzle based on her award winning ‘Imaginasaurus’.
“I still retain friends in the traditional fine art world,” says Helen, “and I believe the attitude to textile arts is changing. A number of them have been very supportive. My goal though is to see one of my quilts hanging in one of the major galleries. There are 27 million quilters in the USA. This is a serious artistic business.”
Name
Helen Godden
Based
Canberra, Australia
Websites
www.helengodden.com
Email
hgodden@aussieapplique.com.au
Also, visit Helen’s other website:
Aussie Appliqué
www.aussieapplique.com.au
There you will find appliqué patterns plus plenty of photographs of award winning quilts, not to mention tales
from her quilting travels and you can read her ‘Secrets to free-motion machine quilting’ section.
Find out more about Ricky at
www.rickytims.com
Please Login or Sign up to share, vote, favourite or comment.
