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Meet Jane Ferguson Jane Ferguson came by quilting naturally. In the 1950s, her
mother, a Home Economics teacher, sewed virtually
all Jane’s, clothes and saved the scraps
in a bag. With the scraps, her mother made comforters filled with
wool batt. She would say to Jane, “When I get too old,
I’ll make a quilt.” But she died in her 50s and never made that
quilt. Jane carried that bag of scraps with her for twenty-seven years. In 1981 Jane and her husband moved to Bolton where she met Lois Downey. Lois taught a quilting class and Jane signed up for it. Her first attempt was a beautiful double-sided pillow with Prairie Points.
Her first quilt was called an Album Quilt or Chimney Sweep and was made from the bag of scraps. Each block tells a story of the dresses her mother made her. Some are from children’s frocks, some from a brownie uniform and one from a formal dress.
She still has it in her bedroom on a rack - not the bed, because of the dogs.
Jane has met most of her friends because of quilting. She got involved in quilting in churches because Bolton was a small rural agricultural community. She helped start the Bolton Quilt Guild, which was a small group of women. Sadly, it is no longer in existence. She would also attend the Friendship Quilt Program, which was the precursor of the Etobicoke Quilters’ Guild, when it met in a library. Each month the ladies of EQG would make blocks and then draw a name from a hat. Jane won the Dresden Plate blocks one month.
After it was finished, it had all the signatures of the ladies who made the blocks and quilted it. You may recognize some of the names: Sarah Lord, Wilma Virch, Dorothy Hinton, Erla McCauley, Sheila Gardiner and Marg Moffat.
Teaching
Quiltmaking As she became more proficient she started to teach. She
volunteered to teach beginning quilters for minimum cost because she felt that
“young eager wannabe quilters” would have to hire a babysitter, buy material
and then pay for the class. One of her first classes was a Six Block Sampler taught in a six-week class. Janis Knifton, Violet Redman and Lynne Mackenzie, good friends today, took that class. In it they learned how to appliqué and paper piece. Jane’s green and pale peach teaching sample hangs on the wall in her spare bedroom.
She also taught a Saturday
colour class called Colour in Cloth. You brought all your scraps to class
and then glued them onto paper to show all the shades. It focused on the
variety of visual textures, stripes versus florals, small versus splashy, and
light versus dark. Students were taught not to “try to match the colors
perfectly” but to focus on the contrast. Over the years, Jane has
taught a lot of beginning classes. Once someone wanted a class on the Lone
Star, so Jane went home and made one. She had never attempted it before.
Her Sewing Machines
Jane is now perfecting her free motion machine quilting on her Brother Nouvelle 1500s machine, which only does straight stitching.
She is also using it to do free hand embroidered pictures of dogs.
It has a very large opening that makes machine quilting easier. She also has an embroidery machine, a serger, and a Singer 222K Featherweight Free Arm – which is quite the collector’s item because the extension plate can be removed.
Years
ago her husband bought her a Singer Golden Touch and Sew for
Christmas He purchased it in Hong
Kong. It was a top of the line machine and she thought she “had died and
gone to heaven.” Now her daughter has it. In 1982 she bought a
Janome with zigzag and a few decorative stitches. It is a really nice
machine. However, her friend Heather Sproul, former President of EQG, was
saving her money for a Bernina so Jane began
to save too. She never did buy a Bernina; she bought a Pfaff instead.
The Pfaff is still her primary machine. Jane says, “It does what I want
it to do.” Jane keeps busy with many
different things. She belongs to a Pfaff Club whose motto is
Keeping you in Stitches (KYIS).
She has been involved with the Bolton Fall Fair since 1983. She started
with the Pancake Breakfast and has been in charge of the Large Needlework
(Quilting) Category for many years. She only joined our Etobicoke
Quilters Guild because a lot of the Bolton ladies would drive down to the city.
Today it bothers her that she is not as active as she used to be. Keeping Busy She also volunteers. As a driver for the Cancer Society, she used to take people to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in downtown Toronto. She drove for twenty years. She felt happy that she could help and found it very gratifying. While driving, she learned a very important lesson. She learned that “People with a positive mental attitude last a lot longer.” This has stood her in good stead, as she was diagnosed with cancer herself in 1996.
When asked what drives her
crazy Jane mentioned two things. The first is her sore thumbs when
doing handwork. She has started doing more machine appliqué
as a result. The second is UFOs. She still has a couple of
things that didn’t work out. However, she feels that she has finished a
third of them. It depends how urgent it is. Jane’s style Jane feels that she is more of a traditional quilter. She likes doing patchwork and finds hand quilting very relaxing, despite her thumbs. Also quilt names and their histories intrigue her. Little Giant is an intricate pattern that has quite a history. Little Giant was the main speaker at Gettysburg when they were dedicating the cemetery to the fallen men. However, his speech was overshadowed by Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Big orator – but a little man. Jane has one square of Little Giant finished and on the wall in her sewing room.
She
doesn’t feel that she is creating anything if she just copies the pattern.
She likes changing things and making it her own. Jane will
take a traditional pattern like a 9-patch or Bear’s Paw and give it a twist
and make it her own. One year the Brampton Quilter’s Guild held a
challenge with fabric donated by Northcott. The theme was ‘The Blues.’
She had a great idea. She remembered a book called Bears of Blue River
about a pioneer family and a bear that glowed in the dark. She make
different sized Bear Paw blocks and partial blocks and quilted it all with
silver thread. Her daughter now has it at her Lake House in South
Carolina. Advice for a new quilter
“Learn how to do the basics properly. Learn how to do bindings properly
on the bias and your mitred corners will work.” She also recommends a thimble cage, which she wears around her neck. It came from Stone Mountain, near Atlanta, Georgia. It was a present from her daughter. Jane had used her mother’s thimble until she wore a hole in it. Her favourite thimble is one that has brass inside it and steel outside.
The Clover Desk Needle Threader is the best gadget for quilters. It will even thread a size 11 needle. For quilting needles she prefers John James quilting needles in size 11 mi longues that have a longer eye but are very short. They help you make smaller stitches. She will often thread 10 needles and then put them in her Clover Quilt Dome.
Her
Quilts
Jane has made 8 or 10 bed quilts by hand and machine and given them to
her family, grandchildren and step grandchildren. Her second quilt ever was forest green and maroon. She had taken a class on Bargello with twelve different fabrics.
It is king sized and all
hand quilted. She originally made it for her daughter who didn’t like
it. She wanted an Appalachian Trail – queen size with drunkards path and
30s reproduction fabrics. Jane eventually made that.
It has seventy blocks with embroidered flowers and leaves. It has a
scalloped border in blue and white and was hand quilted in the frame. She
started it is 1996 and finished it in 2002. It is amazing.
Jane has made several small pieces as well. One is Barnyard Parcheesi. She gave it to a friend, but it was returned because the husband found it too country for his taste.
Her ‘Road to California Round the Horn’ wall hanging resides at the top of the stairs. It is a beautiful appliquéd sailing vessel set in a road to California patterned border. It was a Hobbyhorse challenge. She got the idea for it from a book her father had encouraged her to read called “Richard Henry Dana’s Two Years before the Mast.” The book highlighted the plight of the able bodied seaman and made the public aware of the terrible working conditions. Social reform was the result of the book and a beautiful quilt was the result of the challenge.
Currently, Jane is working on a number of projects. One is her dog quilt made with embroidered pictures. Another is One Block Wonder. She just got the book and is having fun with a wild insect fabric.
She also has thirty-two flower garden blocks finished. She is using the paper pieced hexagon technique. Jane calls it “Idiot’s Delight” because you don’t have to plan ahead or think about it.
Her
Sewing Room Jane
is lucky: she
lives in a large house in Bolton. One bedroom is her sewing room. It
has beautiful pine floors, natural light, blue toile curtains, an OTT light, a
cutting table, two sewing machine tables, a computer and printer. There
are lots of shelves with books and neatly
organized Rubbermaid totes. The room is full to bursting with ideas,
materials and projects just ready to start. Her quilt frame gets set up in
her living room. One quilt was in the frame for two years. When
cutting, she will often use the family room, as she needs a flat place to lay
out her material Jane has come a long way since she inherited that bag of scraps and finally decided to make the quilt that her Mother never got a chance to make.
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Etobicoke Quilters Guild, 56 Neilson Drive, Etobicoke, Ontario info@EtobicokeQuiltersGuild.com Site designed by Barbara Elias and maintained by Mychol Scully and Pam Evans |
