Helma Huisman-Hildebrand

Helma works and lives on a cargo ship which operates on the rivers and channels throughout Europe. Together with her husband she operates as captains on their ship and run their shipping company. In her spare time, she loves to make antique looking quilts which could have been made in the 1830’s till the early 1900’s. She likes to use reproduction fabrics to come as close as possible to the fabrics seen in the antique quilts. Finding those reproduction fabrics and appropriate colors is her other fun occupation. Due to a lack of space, she works in her kitchen on the ship, and every spare moment of “standby time” is used to work on her quilts. For her, it is also a great hobby which really helps to pass the time on the ship being very isolated from family, friends and shops. She likes to work with her trusty sewing machine to construct the quilts and loves to experiment with the machine to get beautiful details and effects, like the ones seen on the antique quilts. Doing all the work by hand is for her as a working person not doable and the time saved with working with her machine, she splashes out with extensive hand quilting. Techniques she loves doing include: patchwork, applique, trapunto, embroidery, broderie perse, also machine quilting, but her biggest love is hand quilting and her quilts are heavily hand quilted.