Arapahoe County Quilters

 

 Quint-Essentially Quilted

Spotlight Feature

This month’s spotlight is on a group of five professional long arm machine quilters who for over 5 years have been coming together and putting on a quilt show featuring quilts they have quilted for some of the local customers.  The members of the group are Sandi Fruehling, Susan F. Geddes, Lois Hager Knight, Kay Morrison, and Carolyn Schmitt.

This year marks the group’s 5th anniversary of putting on an exciting quilt show of 29 quilts including a quilt challenge. Every year the group members challenge themselves to make small quilt projects. This year they decided to make small quilts inspired by their favorite Crayola color. The main quilt show features beautifully and intricately quilted quilts ranging in size, fabrics and patterns. The quilt size ranges from a small baby size quilt and wall hanging to large bed size quilts. The design of the quilt tops ranges from traditional to a very contemporary. As I walked through the show and admired the quilting it was hard to pick my favorite because each quilt was beautifully finished with unique quilting design. The show confirms that often it is the quilting that makes the quilt. 

SANDI FRUEHLING Sandi began quilting about 20 years ago. She has been quilting professionally on her longarm machine for nine years.  She quilts on a Gammill Classic longarm machine.  Her focus is heirloom quilting--finishing the quilt the way Grandma might have but using a machine instead of by hand. Her specialty is feathers. You will find them in borders, blank squares, triangles or any open space. She likes designing feathers to fit inside interesting shapes. Sandi’s machine quilting has been found on quilts published in "Quilter’s Newsletter Magazine", "McCall’s Quilting", three books by Bobbie A. Aug and Sharon Newman, "Triangle-Free Quilts" by Judy Hopkins, and thirteen books by Nancy Smith and Lynda Milligan.

KAY MORRISON Even as a small child, Kay has always loved creating art.  A third generation textile artist, she learned all types of needlework from her mother and grandmother but it wasn’t until she became a mother herself that Kay pursued quilting.  It quickly became a passion and then a business.  Kay quilts in her home on her Gammill Classic longarm and loves the flexibility of working in her pajamas surrounded by her family.  She enjoys the ability to work on a variety of quilts, both traditional and innovative.  Kay especially likes to quilt funky feathers and swirls. Kay has expanded her business to include her passion of creating custom whimsical portrait quilts.

LOIS HAGER KNIGHT Lois is a charter and current member of the International Machine Quilters Association (IMQA).  She has had an article on longarm quilting continually posted on a longarm-related website since 1998.  She also had an article on longarm quilting published in a magazine reaching quilters in the United Kingdom and Western Europe.  Her quilts have been featured as a book cover and in Quilter's Newsletter Magazine.  Lois is active on CQC’s Documentation Committee and has presented talks to local guilds on longarm quilting.   She encourages her clients to enter their quilts into local county fairs and guild shows and has won many ribbons on these quilts.  Lois collaborated with quilt designer Erin Russek which resulted in a quilt being juried into both Houston IQF (2005) and the Paducah AQS Show (2006).  Lois has been quilting professionally for over nine years and still loves her job!

SUSAN FRANCES GEDDES I've been an artist since before I can remember.  My artwork covered our basement walls.  I have studied many different mediums through my life and love to learn new techniques.  In the mid nineties I needed a job that I could do from my home during the hours I could work.  That was usually 10 p.m. until 3 a.m.  In a chat group on the internet a woman suggested I get a longarm quilting machine and start a quilting business. I ordered a machine sight unseen.  Oh my goodness, it was HUGE.  Well, it was fun to guide around on a practice sheet, then I tried my first quilt.  UH OH. What a learning curve I had taken on.   Over nine years later, I can say it has been a wonderful learning experience.  The people are lovely, the subject matter, historical and current, is stimulating and the medium has proven to be so varied and fulfilling as to meet my every artistic need.

From left to right: Kay Morrison, Carolyn Schmitt, Susan Frances Geddes, Lois Hager Knight, and Sandi Fruehling