Helma Huisman-Hildebrand

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Traditional quilts
2024
Artist's country: Netherlands, Switzerland

More than 20 years ago, Helma visited a beautiful teddy bear shop, where they displayed little quilts and antique quilts as a decoration.

Helma collected teddy bears and asked if she could buy a little quilt as a decoration for her teddy bears. The shop owner told her that they were not for sale and added the magical words “Why not make your own quilts?”

Good idea but Helma had only one problem: she couldn’t sew, not even a stitch.

But she decided to try, with the biggest needle she could find, a pattern out of a hand craftbook, a piece of extractor hood filter and her old rulers from school.

It was smaller than what she had expected, she had forgotten to add the seam allowances, but she was hooked! She had a new passion: making traditional, antique looking quilts.

Passion for Quilting, a Walk down Memory Lane

Sainte-Croix-aux-Mines

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.