11.08.2007
Showcasing colorful quilts
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"Harbinger’s Hope” by Susan Brubaker Knapp won Best in Show. Inspired by a battle with Duke Power, after they tried to cut down Knapp’s 70-year-old maple trees. The quilt is meant to “celebrate spring.” |
With more than 2,000 quilts on display, the first “Sail into Quilting” event showcased various techniques of quilting and offered expertise from 14 vendors from North Carolina and as far away as Florida and West Virginia.
Sharon Price, a vendor from West Virginia, demonstrated the long-arm quilting machine for Sugar Creek Quilting.
“Instead of moving the fabric, the machine moves,” she explained as she worked the A-1 long arm. The technique she uses is called “thread painting” and creates a swirl pattern.
It normally takes her a day to draw out the design and then two days to do the actual quilting, which includes a backing, batting (or stuffing) and then a quilt top.
“My mother-in-law got me into it four and a half years ago, and I’ve loved it ever since,” she added.
Debora Brooks also shared her passion at the Under The Needle booth.
“I’ve been quilting for 40 years and was first interested because of my grandma,” she said.
Brooks sat surrounded by quilting notions, making a small piece and chatting excitedly about the craft, while her husband read a Harry Potter novel.
As for her patterns, she said an idea first “comes to me in my head, and then I put it to paper.”
How long it takes to make that idea a reality, however, depends on the maker’s fancy.
“If I really like the pattern, it takes me a month (to do a medium-sized quilt),” she said, smiling. “If I don’t, then it might take a year or two.”
Mooresville resident René Crowder owns a quilt shop that sells a large variety of fabrics, magazines, patterns and pretty much everything a quilter could need.
“We have all the materials, we do classes, we sell long arm quilters, you name it,” she said.
Her business also does custom quilting.
“If you come in, we can get you set up with a pattern and the material and we’ll make it for you,” she said. “We do a lot of T-shirt quilts, like from children’s sports, that kind of thing. That’s very popular for Christmas and graduation.”
The classes offered at René’s Quilt Shop range from beginners to the more advanced.
“We literally start at ‘this is a sewing machine and this is what it does,’ ” Crowder said.
At the quilt show, Laurie Foss demonstrated the Rule Steady at her booth, an invention she says is the “best tool ever.”
“It’s imported from Australia and holds your ruler in place during the rotary cutting process,” she said, while manning the Quilter’s Edge booth. “It has to be to be very precise and this is the tool that makes that happen.”
Demonstrations like Foss’ were so well received that volunteers from the Lake Norman Quilters another show is already being planned for 2009.
Lake Norman Quilters meets the fourth Tuesday of each month at 7 p.m. at First Baptist Church in Mooresville. Meeting dates may be different in November and December due to holidays. For information, call 704-664-6936.