Cristina Arenegui Bono will be teaching all four days of Road@Home:
On Wednesday, W100 – Borders & Slashing Galore
On Thursday, T100 – Appliquilting
On Friday, F100 – Deep In The Forest
And on Saturday, S200 – A Whimsical Village
European Teacher Comes To Road@Home
Cristina Arenegui Bono first heard about quilting in 1996 when she went to watch the film “How to make an American quilt.” She left “the cinema absolutely fascinated about quilting but at that time I was living in London and I couldn’t find any place to learn.” Three years later when she was pregnant with her son, she found out that a patchwork teacher was coming to her town to teach an intensive course and so Cristina enrolled right away. That was the beginning of Cristina’s quilt journey and she hasn’t stopped since then.
Cristina Arenegui Bono never thought about becoming a professional quilter until her quilting teacher told Cristina about another woman in Spain who had a long arm quilting business. Cristina had been looking for a job that she could do from her own home so that she could take care of her son with special needs. Cristina bought her first long arm quilting machine in 2005 and opened a business six months later. Cristina has gone to England, Germany and the United States, perfecting her business by taking opportunities to learn from the best quilters in the industry.
19th Century Quilt Studio
Cristina Arenegui Bono set up her quilting business in the house where she grew up: a 19th century home. Cristina says the house “has its limitations but it also has its charm.”
Different rooms house different aspects of the business. The warehouse was her brother’s old bedroom. Cristina dyes fabrics in the old family kitchen, and her clients hear the church bells as they learn to quilt.
A fairly large area of the house is the quilting workshop where two long arm quilting machines are set up. Both Cristina Arenegui Bono and her husband work on the long arm machines. The rest of the house is dedicated to the online store as well as a small recording studio where Cristina gives her online courses and her live broadcasts.
Lessons Learned from COVID-19
Since Cristina has always worked from home, the Coronavirus hasn’t stopped her from working on her long arm quilting business. However, Cristina noted that “This time has given me the chance to do quite a big amount of online courses. I have also had more time to work on my own quilts.”
The Coronavirus has taught Cristina Arenegui Bono that “you cannot plan everything in your life. From one day to the next, everything changes, and you have to rethink everything, work, family relationships, etc. Now I try to do more than what really fills me up and I live in the moment.”
Road@Home Classes
Cristina first began teaching quilt classes in 2013. She was encouraged by her longarm clients who were always asking her when she was going to teach them to machine quilt. At first, Cristina gave courses in her quilt shop. It didn’t take long for quilt shops throughout Spain to start asking her to travel to their shops to teach.
Being with her students is what Cristina likes most about teaching. She says that she has found that many of her students had given up on machine quilting. Her best reward is to see these students at the end of a class going home, wanting to continue practicing.
Cristina commented that, “Teaching at Road@Home is a dream come true to me…Being a member of Road´s Faculty is such a big honor to me.” She hopes her students gain confidence in their quilting skills, enjoy the classes and by the end of her classes, “they are keen to make their own whimsical quilts.”
See more about Cristina Arenegui Bono on her Facebook Page.
