By Linda W. Darden
The JASNA North Carolina region got crafty for the March 26 meeting with a quilling workshop led by The Quilling Edge’s Carolyn Edge. Carolyn has been quilling since 2017, starting with a hobby picked up in a local workshop, and now she creates stunningly beautiful designs as shown on her website.
In advance of the meeting, members were provided a supply list, including a blog post on Carolyn’s website, as well as options for purchasing quilling kits. During the presentation Carolyn demonstrated how a quilling project can be completed with a variety of supplies, including a simple round toothpick.
As the workshop began, Carolyn provided an overview of the concepts of quilling and explained how artworks and designs are made using the basic coiling and shaping techniques. While members worked on their pineapple designs, Carolyn shared a brief history of quilling, noting that the name was derived from the use of goose quills to roll the coils. While there is no definitive record of the first use of decorative quilling, there are records indicating the practice was used in the Middle Ages. In particular nuns and priests were known to use the gilt-edge pages of church books to form decorations.
In Jane Austen’s era, quilling was commonly called “filigree” in reference to the metal-work sometimes used in jewelry and ironworks. Filigree was considered an appropriate pastime for an accomplished lady, similar to needlework or painting. Members of JASNA may be familiar with the reference to filigree in Sense and Sensibility when Lucy Steele works on a basket for Lady Middleton’s “poor little Annamaria.” Members were directed to a Jane Austen Summer Program blog post for additional information.
Carolyn led the group with step-by step instructions, along with troubleshooting tips for common problems. The website www.paperzen.ca was also provided as a resource site, in addition to the links page on Carolyn’s site, and numerous tutorials of varying skill levels can be found on YouTube.
The workshop concluded with members having completed a lovely pineapple quilled card. In the Regency era, pineapples were symbols of wealth and of colonialism. More information was offered to members in the Persuasions article by Damianne Scott, focused on pineapples and their vexed symbolism in Regency England. In the United States today, it depends on your region or community what symbolism a pineapple can carry, from being a symbol of hospitality, globalization, welcome, a particular sexual lifestyle (if the pineapple is upside down), or slavery; see this article to learn more about the pineapple’s ‘prickly’ associations.
The meeting wrapped up with a big HUZZAH and thank you to Carolyn for sharing her skill. JASNA-NC had a blast learning this art form!
Next up for JASNA-NC is a talk on disability in Austen with Kathleen James-Cavan and our Virtual Book Club in May where we’ll be reading John Mullan’s What Matters in Jane Austen?.