Materials: fabrics, embellishments

Technique: cut-paper lettering design, machine appliqué, hand quilting, sewing

Size: 58 x 58 cm

Description: Early this century Frances Hodgson Burnett wrote a children’s story which has now become a classic. In the story three children tend a long-neglected garden, and in the process find health and happiness. The book is called ‘The Secret Garden’ and is the inspiration for this wall-quilt. 

I have constructed the words SECRET GARDEN to depict the tangle of branches and vines in the neglected garden. These words are appliquéd in dark green silk. The background fabrics represent the plants thriving and blossoming as they are tended by Mary, Colin and Dickon. The friendly robin, who led Mary to the garden, keeps an eye on the activity - and the rejuvenation of the children’s bodies and souls as they tend the plants.  The words quilted around the border are a direct quote from the book - ‘it was the sweetest most mysterious-looking place anyone could imagine’.  I felt these words epitomised the wonder and magic of the secret garden.

Displayed in the Queensland Quilters Challenge at Southbank Visitors Centre in 1995, then toured throughout Qld in 1996.

Featured in the “Designing with Letters” presentation at the Brisbane Art & Craft Fair in 1998.

Displayed in Indooroopilly Library in 2001.

Exhibited in “Fibres ’n’ Threads” at Pine Rivers Gallery in 2002, and in “An Evening of Art” in Brisbane in 2003.

Displayed in my solo exhibition “Colourful Language” at Gallery 119 in 2004, and in Corinda Library in 2004 and Toowong Library in 2004-5.

Printed in Textile Fibre Forum and displayed in my solo exhibition “Colourful Language” at Gallery 159 in 2007.

Displayed at Scattered Arts in 2008 and in “Undercurrents” at Art Factory Gallery in 2011.

Exhibited in my “The Language of Nature I” solo exhibition at Richard Randall Studio in 2012

(read more information about this in my Residency Blog).