Meeting the Queen

Today, I met the Queen.

Not that Queen, silly. She's in England. The Queen of Scrap Quilting, Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville.com!

Bonnie spoke this morning to the Old Church Gallery Quilters Guild in Floyd. Her quilts are my absolute favorites! My first quilting class (and finished quilt) was a Scrappy Friendship Star (click here to see it), and right then and there I was hooked. If you Google scrap quilts it doesn't take long to find Bonnie's website.Bonnie's website. Once you're there, it takes hours to break yourself away from it! I was (and still am) spellbound by her simple patterns for beautiful quilts using almost all scraps.

Since I am a starter rather than a finisher, I have many Bonnie quilts in different stages of progress, and many scraps cut into the right sizes and ready to be turned into something I hope can be even half as beautiful as her quilts.

Bonnie is just a cute in person as she is on her blog. She strongly advocated using right down to the last inch-and-a half square of every fabric in your stash, and showed us how to do it! My favorite quote from today's lecture: "If it's still ugly, you just didn't cut it small enough". Yep, Bonnie's a girl after my own heart. Matchy-matchy just doesn't excite me! Give me a pile of scraps and all the memories that come along with them. To me, that's what gives a quilt character!

Just when I thought the day couldn't get any better, I got to have lunch with my friend, Camelia, and eat my favorite sandwich in the world- grilled tuna on rye at Blue Ridge Restaurant. As if that wasn't enough, we topped off a perfect day with a visit to Schoolhouse Fabrics, which really is, as it says on their sign, "A Sewing Paradise".

Thanks, Old Church Gallery Quilters, Bonnie, and Camelia for a lovely day!