Lalla

Hullo, my name is Lalla and I’m a long-time thread-drawing person, but that almost always involves quilting, and sometimes I do actually make quilts, even if they usually do include ‘drawings’, usually as appliqués. I illustrate books, too, and my subjects are mostly animals, both in thread-drawing and illustration. I’ve been lucky enough to have four one-woman exhibitions of my thread-drawings in London, where I grew up, three of them at the Royal National Theatre. My original profession is as an actor, and I still do a lot of voice stuff - reading books for audio mostly, and sometimes doing audio plays, all of which I can still do from Hong Kong where I now live, having moved here from Oxford, my home for the last thirty years. My acting career has given me the opportunity here at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where my husband is master of a college, to work with students on presentation skills - I find, to my amazement, that I love teaching and seem to be quite good at it! I love working with these students, they are so smart and quick to learn. I don’t know anyone else who quilts here, and I’m finding it quite difficult to find supplies - I often resort to getting UK suppliers to post me fabric, even though there are areas in Hong Kong that do sell such things but not what I want! I guess I’m too picky? I use a lot of Japanese fabric and you’d think it would be easy to find here, but it isn’t! I first found this site, earlier today, because I’m thinking of upgrading from my beloved Juki TL98P that I’ve had for years and years - it’s done me proud and I feel like a traitor even thinking of changing - but I covet the speed regulator that the newer versions have, and am dithering between the 2010Q and the 2200QVP Mini; I think I’ll probably go for the former because I really don’t need the extra feet that come with the Mini, can’t seem to see that there is much else different, and rather prefer the simplicity of the 2010Q design. I don’t usually do huge quilts so I think I’d be fine with the smaller machine, and I’d have the speed regulator! I very much look forward to reading what others have to say on all sorts of subjects to do with quilting, and am glad to be in touch with you all.