Southwind Inspirations

Every so often it is fun to have a Challenge! It wakes up the creative juices and makes you think outside the box. At the beginning of summer I had the pleasure of teaching at the North Carolina Quilt Symposium here in Fayetteville NC.  Part of the symposium was a quilt show and of course vendors.  You can probably imagine that much of the little spare time I had was spent looking at quilts and shopping and chatting with quilting friends and shopping.  On one these excursions I discovered some curious batik fabric remnants. The remnants were packaged in an enticing roll and I couldn’t wait to take a little peak inside one of the rolls. About 7 small strips of fabric between 3 and 7 inches wide, approximately 1 yard total were in each bundle. - These were curious little batik treasures - not big enough to make a large quilt, but not too little to make something fun. I bought a few rolls, but only opened one roll and picked out all the rest based on what I saw in the margins of t

I was trying to come up with a special and creative way to bring my new blog into this world, but then after some reflection decided the creative and special way is to just get started.  A short introduction may be in order for some of you.  I am a quilt designer, teacher, author and proud owner of my own company Southwind Designs , a pattern company with many diverse patterns on the market.   My patterns use my dimensional curved piecing or Peeled-Back Patchwork techniques:  Straight-line Piecing with Curved Results! which is the title of my book as well.  One of my better known patterns is Mexican Stars and is still a favorite among many quilters.   When I have a free moment I also like to create Textured Landscapes, a free-form landscape technique I came up with and have been teaching for as many years as I have been designing. Even though I have been around the quilting block for a while I am just now entering the blog-o-sphere , so please bear with me as I learn and explor