and 5601C Fabulous Trapunto Wallhanging on Friday and Saturday
Cindy Seitz-Krug specializes in using a home sewing machine for her heirloom quilting. She owes her love of quilting to her mother. When she was 28 years old, Cindy and her mom took a beginning quilting class, taught by Jenny Carr-Kinney, at the community college in Ventura, California. After that class, Cindy says, “I was completely hooked on quilting.” Unfortunately, today, Cindy’s mom suffers from Alzheimer’s and doesn’t remember that she “used to be quite the quilter.” Luckily for Cindy, both of her half-brothers’ wives quilt, so she is still able to quilt with some family.
An author and award-winning quilter, Cindy won $1,500.00 for Excellence In Machine Quilting at Road 2017 for her quilt, Blush. A wholecloth quilt, Cindy said that her biggest challenge was finding “just the right balance of larger motifs that will dazzle, and subtle but beautiful backgrounds to make the main motifs pop, and also make the viewer delight in the detail.”
Cindy says she gets inspiration for her quilts from quilt shows. “Seeing all those amazing quilts gets my wheels churning and gets me excited to create something beautiful of my own,” shared Cindy. She has also taken quilt classes from three different instructors that have had an impact on her quilting technique: Diane Gaudynski for Machine Quilting; Sally Collins for Piecing; and Elly Sienkiewicz for Applique.
What is the one quilting tool that Cindy can’t live without? “Well, I’d have to say a small, sharp pair of scissors, and a thimble (two tools). And of course, my BERNINA.”
Cindy’s best quilting tip is to persevere if you really want to be able to do something. “When people tell me, ‘I could never quilt like that!’, I say, ‘Yes you can; it just depends on how badly you want to do it. If you want it badly enough, you can!’
What does Cindy like best about teaching? “I love when my students tell me that my classes are the best they’ve ever taken! And amazingly, I hear that a lot. It makes me puff up with pride!”
Cindy hopes that after her students leave her classes that “they will feel empowered and confident in their ability to quilt their own quilts beautifully.”
In addition to her quilting, Cindy enjoys hunting and fishing in the Rocky Mountains. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, in Environmental and Systematic Biology, with a concentration in Fisheries Biology. For more than 20 years, Cindy and her husband owned their own aquaculture facility in Bakersfield, CA, raising catfish for sale to grocers and restaurants. They recently sold their fish farms and relocated to the White Mountains of Arizona.
To learn more about Cindy, please visit her website, Quintessential Quilting.
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Posts Tagged ‘Trapunto’
Meet Road 2018 Teacher Cindy Seitz-Krug
Monday, July 31st, 2017So You Want To Make A Winning Quilt? 2015 Excellence In Hand Quilting
Saturday, December 26th, 2015 White Bouquet was made and quilted by Mariko Duenwald of San Francisco, California. She received $1,500 from sponsor World of Quilts Travel
A quilter for almost 25 years, Mariko Duenwald, came to the United States from Japan in 1983. When Mariko was a young girl living in Japan, she found a “rather unique fabric store” in Tokyo that had an American antique quilt on display. At the time, Mariko didn’t know what a quilt was but she fell in love with what she saw and began researching quilts.
After coming to America, Mariko taught herself how to quilt by reading books. Mariko prefers hand quilting. She has said, “With machine quilting, you really have to concentrate. But with hand quilting, you can sit on the couch and watch TV, so I like that. Quilting is the best part of making a quilt, for me.”
White Bouquet was started in 2011 and finished in 2013. It was an original design made by Mariko and her third trapunto quilt. After completing this quilt, Mariko says she now feels more comfortable with this type of quilt.
]]>So You Want To Make A Winning Quilt? Road 2015 Director’s Choice
Friday, August 7th, 2015 Juanita’s Pearl was made and quilted by Sue Hawkes of Pocatello, Idaho. The Director’s Choice award was sponsored by Moore’s Sewing Center who presented Sue a check for $5,000. 
Sue grew up watching her grandmother cut up any fabric (most of which was recycled from something that was no longer usable as its intended use) she could find into little bitty pieces and then stitch them back together by hand. Sue was always fascinated with the colors and patterns her grandmother created and knew that for sure, someday, she was going to be just like her.
The inspiration for Juanita’s Pearl was Sue’s mother, for which the quilt is named. The two center roses represent Sue’s mother and dad. The nine circling roses are for their children. The long stemmed roses are for their grandchildren. In the border are sixty-four roses, one for each year her parents were married. And the strings of pearls represent the never ending love Sue’s mother had for her family.
It took two and a half years to complete this project. Sue reflected on her work: “I have never taken on such a challenging project both mentally and emotionally. I’m not an artist so the idea of drawing intimidated me a bit. But with all the great tools at hand, I pushed on. My mother loved roses and her favorite color was pink. Her middle name was Pearl so the designing process was easier than I thought it would be with these elements to work with.”
Sue had never done cut away trapunto before, let alone the color trapunto. “The cutting was intense and very time consuming. I had the quilt on my longarm four different times for stitching in the color and then cutting away. During this process, I learned a lot about patience and pacing myself especially around all those pearls, just not once but twice. One wrong snip would end it all. The fifth time on the longarm was for the final quilting.”
Getting to the end of the quilting stage, Sue said she was able to “see the light at the end of the tunnel.” She found that “it was very time consuming and challenging but I used this time to reflect upon all my memories of my mother. Lots of times I had to shut off the machine because I couldn’t see through the tears.”
Her “wow I did it!” moment was when she took the quilt off the longarm and was ready to soak out all the markings and water soluble thread. She prayed it would all come out and that there would be no seepage of color around the trapunto – and there wasn’t!! All her work and worry paid off.
Sue learned many things along the way. What kept pushing her on was what Karen McTavish tells her students and admirers, “Do the hardest thing and push yourself; it will pay off in the end.”
When Sue received her email that she had won Director’s Choice, it was the night before she was to fly out to the show. She remembers, “As I read it I couldn’t believe the words. I just handed off my iPad to my husband to see if he read the same words that I had read.” She spent her winnings on what “every other quilter would do — I bought more fabric!”
Where does Road’s 2015 Director’s Choice winner go from here? “The quilting world is growing in every direction and I plan on growing with it. My biggest obstacle is not enough hours in the day for all I want to do and learn.”
Congratulations Sue Hawkes on winning the 2015 Director’s Choice Award sponsored by Moore’s Sewing Center.
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