Coffee with Pauline and Charlie
Some creative spaces embrace you. Make you want to stay. Definitely invite you to come back.
It makes me wonder what it's like to live in a home that is also your studio. A place that you have both created and create in.
On Bank Holiday Monday, as we took the long way home from Edinburgh where we had been at the Knitting and Stitching Show, Pete and I were more than happy to take up the invitation to visit Pauline Burbidge, Quiltmaker and Charlie Poulsen, Sculptor and Artist at their home and studio at Allanbank Mill Steading in the Borders of Scotland. It was an opportunity to visit that I had long been wanting to make since Pauline became a Handi Quilter Ambassador in 2012.
These photos are from our visit. We hope that you enjoy viewing them as much as we did in seeing the Studio and Pauline and Charlie's latest works plus spending time over coffee discussing not just quilting or art.
The kitchen - a huge space in the lower ground floor of a large barn, converted by Pauline and Charlie over twenty years ago.
A lead hat.
A beautiful view of Allanbank from the new guest room created by Charlie and designed by an architect friend. Apparently, that will be the last building project. But everyone says that when they've finished a challenging project, don't they? I love the curved custom seat.
Lead stems with sedum.
Pulsatilla clump.
The back of the Mill and kitchen.
Charlie's new wax, wood and metal sculptures.
Lead shovel sculpture by Charlie Poulsen.
Lead and wood by Charlie Poulsen.
The Studio display space. Pauline with some of Charlie's latest large-scale drawings.
In Charlie's Studio.
In Pauline's Studio. The Handi Quilter Avante is on a 12' Studio Frame. Pauline mainly quilts on cotton percale using Superior King Tut Thread on top and bottom. Pauline describing her inspiration for this quilt from the landscape around her with a mixture of oil pastel and quilting to Pete.
Pauline's many sketch books are used for reference before she starts quilting.
Large scale drawings of the organic lines are taken from the sketchbooks and used as reference when quilting. Not as an exact replica but to inspire the stitched lines.
Pauline's Studio with one of Pauline's early quilts on display. Other quilts are stored in the cupboard underneath in tubes.
Pauline's Studio with the Handi Quilter Avante Longarm.
A relaxing space at one end of the kitchen. Some of Pauline's Quiltlines and Studio quilts work on cushions and walls decorate the space.
Entrance to Pauline and Charlie's home and Studio.
Pauline in her second studio with her cyanotype work. Cyanotype in this case produces a cyan-blue print onto specially treated fabric after exposure to the sun's rays. According to Wikipedia it is a "photographic printing process that produces a cyan-blue print. Engineers used the process well into the 20th century as a simple and low-cost process to produce copies of drawings, referred to as blueprints. The process uses two chemicals: ammonium iron(III) citrate and potassium ferricyanide."
Oil pastels are used to create the fabric tops that are then quilted.
Charlie on the steps of the Granary - Pauline's studio.
Beautiful light on bottles in one of the original barn windows.
Every year Pauline Burbidge and Charlie Poulsen hold an Open Studio at Allanbank Mill Steading. If you have the chance to go we highly recommend a visit.
4th – 7th August 2017 11am – 6pm, for the four days.
More details on the Open Studio can be found on this link -
For more information about Pauline and Charlie
Pauline Burbidge & Charlie Poulsen: Allanbank Mill Steading,Allanton, Duns, Berwickshire TD11 3JX Tel: 01890 818073
E: info@paulineburbidge-quilts.com
Visit Pauline's website at http://www.paulineburbidge-quilts.com/
Visit Charlie's website at http://www.charlespoulsen-sculpture.com/
Pauline and Charlie are working toward a joint exhibition called ‘Songs for Winter’ to be held at the City Art
Centre, Edinburgh, from 4th November 2017 – 4th March 2018. The show will have echoes of their annual OPENSTUDIO event.
