Fabric Arts - Heritage to Modern
~ By Theo Gustafson of The Cedar Creek Writers
Ellie Hallman remembers her first experiences with fabric arts in making her own school clothes
as a girl.
Her first public recognition for the skill of her hands was in junior high when
a dress she had made won a prize in the Edmonton Exhibition. But as the years passed,
her time was taken up by other important pursuits: education and careers as a nurse and
psychotherapist.
One day while visiting a friend, she was shown some cloth napkins that had been in her friend's family for years. Suddenly that spark of creativity flared, and Ellie saw a way to transform those old-time linens into a more modernly useful product: cushions! The friend was delighted to have her mother's cherished possessions to display and enjoy.
Ellie's fingers must have remembered the joy of their former contact with fabric, because she soon was involved in another cloth transformation: embellishing bed linens. With skillful additions of ribbons, cord, lace, and edgings of various kinds, she creates sets of artful sleeping companions that could make you dream you are royalty. "We spend one third of our lives in bed," Ellie says, "but usually reserve our resources for more public areas of our homes. Why not make your bed beautiful?" Of course the bed linen line is designed to wash beautifully as well as to enhance your dreaming and waking moments.
Currently Ellie is spending more time on cushions and collages, all one-of-a-kind. She has developed a technique for woven ribbon collages, selling some pieces at the Teeny Tiny Show in Duncan. People come to her with family heritage pieces, perhaps crafted by a grandmother's loving hands, to find a new, restored - and better preserved - life as an artistically bordered cushion for future generations to cherish. The threads of creativity connect our
grandparents to our grandchildren through Ellie's antique fabric arts.
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