S is for the Slightly Mad Quilt Lady

The Slightly Mad Quilt Lady is Charlotte Scott, sometimes known in the blogoshpere/ podosphere as Miss Lottie. 

As well as being a great blogger, a quilt gallery owner, an award winning quilt artist and a fabric dyer of some repute,  Charlotte also producers the only quilting podcast in the Southern Hemisphere. 

Listening to her is wonderful -  fantastic change from the undiluted American accents that otherwise constitute all my craft podcasts and many of my non craft ones as well. 

The other great thing about her podcast is that she comes from a perspective that I am more familiar with. In Australia and New Zealand (and most of the rest of the non-American quilting world) quilting fabrics and notions are not cheap. They are expensive... very expensive. Fabric shops are not prolific. We don't have a multitude of guilds within and hour or so of our home. We don't have access to a steady stream of published authors and pattern designers available to come and talk to us or provide workshops. Sheer distance makes it very expensive to get even Australian based teachers to travel to my home town. There isn't a proliferation of quilting shows and conventions with in our country.

I love my podcast community and I have become very fond of a number of the quilting podcasters and I don't mean to be casting aspersions on them. However the US centric nature of many of the quilting podcasts,  blogs and Facebook groups gets a little wearing if not frustrating and exasperating at times. (NOTE I have often made a point to comment on things from the Australian perspective on my favourite podcasts and Facebook group and to their credit the podcasters do try to be more inclusive) 

ANYWAY - I love listening to Charlotte on The Slightly Mad Quilt Lady because she gives a different perspective on quilting. 

As well as talking about her quilting projects and processes, Charlotte also talks about her family (they live on a boat!!) 

her quilt and craft gallery that she recently established (Opua Arts Studio and Gallery) and life in New Zealand. On occasion she interviews other crafters from New Zealand which is wonderful. She did a series of interviews on putting on a quilt show that was fascinating.

One of Charlotte's quilts was selected for a travelling textile art exhibition, Living Colour which came to a quilt expo in Brisbane, Australia, that I was able to attend. I was so excited to go and see the quilt and take a photo of it and tell anyone who would listen that she was my friend. 

Charlotte's podcast is available on Podbean and iTunes. Take a listen. You won't regret it.

All photos on this blog post are taken from Charlotte's blog page, The Slightly Mad Quilt Lady