Textile artist Betty Fraser trained as a teacher at Dunedin Teachers College in the late 1940's and specialised as an art teacher.

Her early works featured here are oil paintings and water colours. She commonly worked with still-life and landscape.

By the 1960's Betty started to produce fabric pictures using a domestic sewing machine to applique layers of fabric. She primarily worked in a pictorial way, often producing 'still-life' works, as well as portraits, images of 'mother and child' as well as number of images of animals and birds, as featured here.

She drew inspiration from the Cubist works of Picasso and Braque as well as the from the paintings of Cezanne, Matisse, Dufy, Rouault and Chagall.

Because of the fragile nature of fabric, very few works have survived from these years.

The close ups images of the still-life work featured in the image gallery show the use of applique techniques with zig-zag stitching around the edges.

In addition Betty 'drew' with a darning foot attachment which allows the machine to be manipulated with a free line, without the constraints of forward and reverse.

The machine embroidered cat is from about 1968 and is an example of the many fabric pictures completed by Betty during the 1960's and 1970's. The surface work is 'drawn' with the darning foot of her domestic sewing machine.

The applique rooster is from about 1975 and combines batik in the background with machine embroidery. It is lightly quilted with a dacron backing.

At this time Betty was working full time as an art teacher and produced many artworks combining batik and embroidery. She had a dedicated studio set up with an industrial chain stitch sewing machine. She also worked with knitting machines to produce garments and later incorporated knitting in her large wool murals.

The majority of the paintings and fabric pictures featured here come from the private collections of her sister, Ann Hall, and her niece, Susie Hall, both of Wellington.

Angela Fraser, POI Research Team, 2002