Erica has always enjoyed sewing. As a young girl, she made some of her own clothes. When she had children, she would sew a dress or two for them as well as clothes for their dolls. Quilts didn’t really arrive on her radar until she was on a vacation with a friend (also a sewist), where they went to a small quilt show just for something to do. They both came away from the show knowing that they wanted to do that. They’ve both been quilting ever since that day.
Rug hooking also intrigued Erica before she started quilting. She took a class and learned all the basics, including how to dye wool. She enjoyed rug hooking so much that she taught two co-workers, and each of them designed their own patterns and made small rugs. She especially liked dyeing the wool and getting different effects with the colors, but she wanted to use the wool in a different way. She had recently taken a quilt class and wanted to get more involved in quiltmaking … and her wool dyeing and quiltmaking just came together! (She enjoyed working on that first quilt block so much that she just kept adding to it until she had completed a whole quilt.)
Erica loves the impact of color against black, and the richness of wool seems to make the colors much more vibrant. She also loves hand stitching with contrasting embroidery floss to create different effects. She now switches between cotton and wool quilts because she can’t choose between the two—they both seem to fill different creative needs.
By this author:
Everything’s Blooming
Summertime Sampler
Wild Wool & Colorful Cotton Quilts
Flower Show Quilt
