Meet The New Quilt Artist: Sue Reid

Name of Artwork: Abandonment#2

Sue Reid can remember sewing from a very early age, hand sewing dolls clothes and then progressing to making her own clothes as a teenager on her mother’s sewing machine. Sue also liked to draw and painted abstracts.

Sue was a mathematics teacher and on retiring took a course to make a traditional sampler quilt so that she could learn the many facets of quilt making. She also took workshops with Gabriella Verstraeten on free form machine embroidery, so that she could master her machine and make it talk for her. Sue discovered that she preferred to create quilts with hand painting and appliquéing before adding machine embroidery and machine quilting.

Colour, shape and stitch are the inspiration for Sue in creating her contemporary art quilts. The love of the colour orange is very evident as well as her penchant for pattern. Free motion quilting is another love as it changes a good piece into an amazing quilt in her eyes..

Sue finds the most difficult part in her creative process is the initial idea, and often spends hours mulling over ideas. She rarely produces samples, but is more spontaneous and just goes for it, not always successfully, but many great ideas have come from mistakes. It is not unusual for her to create four or five of the same quilt in order “to get it right “.

There is always a meaning behind each quilt that Sue makes, and she feels that the title is very important, so she jots down her thoughts in a journal. Sue loves making her contemporary art quilts.

Sue Reid online: Instagram  

The New Quilt, on exhibition at Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, Windsor, NSW from 5 February – 11 April 2021. 

Gallery hours: Open 6 days a week Monday, Wednesday-Friday 10am-4pm Saturday-Sunday 10am-3pm. Closed on Tuesday and public holidays.