Andrea Brokenshire won $2,500 from Sponsor, Baby Lock, for Dance of the Twirly Girls
The 2019 Road to California winner for Best Domestic Machine Quilting was a quilt made and dedicated to Andrea Brokenshire’s two aunts, Aunt Esther and Aunt Helen. Andrea shared that both women “left there earthly bounds within a month of each other” a year ago in winter. Andrea said that she “needed to put my sadness somewhere so, I pulled out the fuchsia top that I had painted that previous summer and turned my sadness into joy. These fuchsia blossoms were at least 4-5″ long and danced in the wind. While stitching, I thought of my aunties twirling around in a joyous dance. They are the Twirly Girls.”
It took Andrea about one month to paint the quilt and four months to do the domestic machine quilting. Andrea always stitches her quilts using a stationary quilting machine. The hardest part for this accomplished and award winning quilter in making Dance of the Twirly Girls was to reduce the effect of the weight of the quilt so that the quilt moved smoothly under the needle while stitching, especially in the center of the quilt.
When she received the email from Road telling her she had won Best Domestic Machine Quilting, Andrea said, “I was gobsmacked! Very, very happy. Especially because I know that the talent presented was phenomenal.”
Andrea has been sewing since she was a child and had created several other needle crafts projects over the years. Her quilting journey began when she moved to Texas and joined a stitching group to meet people with similar interests. One of the women in the group was a quilter and she convinced everyone to make a round robin style picnic quilt. After that project, Andrea wanted to make an applique quilt. She taught herself the technique from an applique book. When that quilt was finished, Andrea felt she had officially “caught the quilting bug” and has been creating in fabric ever since.
Winning Best Domestic Machine Quilting was not Andrea’s first quilting award from Road to California. In 2017, she won Best Use of Color for Blue Anemone.
What are Andrea’s future quilting plans? “I like to challenge myself with each quilt I create, and I plan to continue that practice. I also look forward to sharing my art as a quilt educator. I also have plans to exhibit my work museum exhibitions and various quilt shows.”
Congratulations Andrea for winning Best Domestic Machine Quilting at Road to California 2019. To learn more about Andrea and her work, follow her on her Facebook Account, AMB Fiber Art & Design.
