Jeannette Mayne was born in Scotland in 1948, she left Scotland as a two year old when her parents emigrated to Australia.

I remember I first met her in 2001, while working on my first art project since relocating from London to Melbourne. The project envisaged bringing artists from an aboriginal arts community on the Tiwi Islands ( 100km north of Darwin ) into working relationships with members of suburban and rural sewing groups in Victoria. Jeannette became one of the sewing team and produced two standout patchwork and appliqué pieces for an exhibition of the work in London in 2002.

{ Craft Culture Article : Reflections on Tiwi Design }

Before the war Jeannette’s mother Jean, worked for Donald Brothers, a textile company based in Dundee on the east coast of Scotland. She worked in the sewing room, embroidering linen and interior fabrics.

At that time Donald Brothers were world famous for producing canvas for artists, but they also created linen and interior fabrics, which coincidentally included some quite interesting print designs. When the war started Jean was moved to the weaving sheds producing canvas for the war effort.

Jeannette’s father Yannick, was born in Poland and was living in France. As Poland was already occupied when France entered the war, he signed up for the Polish army, and was sent to Scotland to complete his basic army training.

Yannick was billeted to the farm next door to Jean’s family farm near Dundee and they met on a trip to Stirling Castle. Yannick went to fight in Europe and souvenired fabrics that he sent back to Jean in Scotland to make a wedding trousseau including her wedding dress. They were married on his return from the war and five years later, now with a two year old daughter Jeannette, they took the opportunity of the $10 passage and emigrated to Australia.

They moved around Victoria before buying land in Glen Roy where they built a prefab and settled down. In Melbourne Jean worked for many years at the department store Georges, making curtains and at home she made clothes for Jeannette and her extended family.

Through ongoing discussions with Jeannette about the origins of her craft and in particular the crafts parallel development in Australia. She explained that in the small communities of rural Australia patchwork quilts were often made for newlyweds by the women of the community, who would come together to sew on a single piece of fabric that would eventually make up the quilt. The practice symbolised the close-knit bonds of the community and perhaps also referred to hard times and the need to spread financial loads. These blankets were constantly in use and regularly washed. After a while, they would need to be repaired, adding new fabrics and gradually changing the appearance of these family heirlooms.

Thus began an idea that has developed into a series of stretched patchwork pieces using the studio backing cloth as the starting point. This new work references the thrift of the original hardship quilts in her story by using what is essentially a by product of our printing process as the source material and references the bonding function of the quilts through the multiple projects and artists collected and represented on the backing cloth.

QUILTED
BACKING CLOTH PAINTINGS
Stewart, Bonnie and Jeannette have developed a series of patchwork pieces using the studio backing cloth as the starting point.

NEW SPACECRAFT HARD CUBES
this format allows us to extend our technical repertoire on wood. Exciting results on plantation pine, loving the grain. A collaboration between Stewart, Neil and Bonnie.

SPACECRAFT SEVEN WAY WONDER DRESS.
made out of 100% cotton jersey. Wear it as a dress or skirt - the options are really endless.

NEW PATCHWORK QUILTS
contemporary Australian heirlooms. A collaborative project between Stewart Russell and Jeannette Mayne.