{"id":5538,"date":"2018-02-07T17:39:21","date_gmt":"2018-02-08T00:39:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.road2cablog.com\/?p=5538"},"modified":"2018-02-07T17:39:21","modified_gmt":"2018-02-08T00:39:21","slug":"road-2018-best-of-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/road2ca.com\/blog\/2018\/02\/07\/road-2018-best-of-show\/","title":{"rendered":"Road 2018 Best of Show"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tCongratulations to Claudia Pfeil\u00a0 who won $10,000\u00a0 from Sponsor Gammill Quilting Systems for her quilt,\u00a0Fractal<\/em> \"\"<\/a>Claudia Pfeil is a quilting pioneer in Germany.<\/p>\n\n\nShe made her first quilt in 1984 without the now common rotary cutter and rulers. As she remember, “There was much \u201ctrial and error\u201d as I taught myself the tricks of making templates and seams.” This quilt ended up being her only large sewing project for many years.\nClaudia studied textile design at the University of Applied Sciences Niederrhein. This work drew her interests into different directions. She got the “quilting fever” \u2013\u00a0 but didn’t know it at the time.\nIn 1992, with the birth of her first son, Julian, Claudia decided that the work she had done in the textile arena would go in a new direction.\u00a0 She started by going through her drawers and bins, uncovering\u00a0 her “hoarded\u201d treasures that she had been collecting over the years.\u00a0 One of her treasures that she found were handwoven fabric pieces that she made while attending university, on a 16 shaft loom. She was dedicated to giving those 30×30 cm (almost 12 inch) blocks a new “right to exist\u201c in a quilt! Because she didn’t have the “proper ‘yarn’ for sewing,” Claudia went to the local sewing shop where she was introduced to her first rotary cutter, mat and quilting ruler.\u00a0 Content with her\u00a0 \u201clearn by doing\u201d approach, those experimental times gave her the courage to improvise.\u00a0 She took her finished quilt to the sewing shop and immediately, the owners asked her to teach them her technique!!\u00a0 Looking back, Claudia says she has “to smile about my self confidence without having any clue!”\nIt didn’t take long for Claudia to start buying and selling fabrics; first in the basement of her house, then in 1997, renting a small location in town where she opened Quilt & Co<\/em>.\u00a0 In 2002, the shop was moved to a larger \u2013 and current – location in Krefeld, Ritterstrasse.\n\"\"<\/a>\nThe fall of 2004 totally changed Claudia’s world. She had brought Quilt & Co<\/em>.\u00a0 as a vendor to the French quilt show,\u00a0Carrefour du Patchwork<\/em>. Next to her booth was APQS. She played everyday on their\u00a0Millennium quilting machine and was hooked with longarm quilting. She purchased her longarm machine in 2005, finding a way to\u00a0“express myself through fabric and thread that was exciting, addictive and fun.” Claudia says free-motion quilting gives her the freedom–“like an eagle flying over the mountains”– to play with spaces and quilting designs.\nWhen Claudia begins a project, she likes to work with a theme. Themes challenge her, get her out of her comfort zone, and start her thinking “out of the box.” Her theme for\u00a0Fractal\u00a0<\/em>was kaleidoscopes. Claudia searched Google for pictures of kaleidoscopes and endless links introduced her to fractals. She admits that before then, she really didn’t know what fractals were.\u00a0 She became fascinated by their dynamic , vitality and vibrancy.\nBefore falling asleep at night, she would collect dreams and visions of her theme and began thinking about how she could translate her visions into realistic designs. She began by preparing circles in different sizes out of white Dupioni silk on freezer paper templates. Next, she drew designs on to the circles, first with pencil, then if she was satisfied, she\u00a0drew them with a black pen (Faber-Castell)\u00a0 filling in the details and painted them with acrylic colors\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 (Stewart Gill) and Tsukineko ink pens.\u00a0Playing and creating\u00a0 the layers is one of the main parts of the quilt. She tried to enhance this impression with the choice and placement of quilting designs.\u00a0Using 100 wt black silk thread, it took several backtracking stitches around the outlines of the circle designs to repeat and enhance the\u00a0 black drawing lines. The design was\u00a0couched with different yarns ( for example Razzle Dazzle and Yli ) around all outlines, respecting again the different layers to create a foreground and a background. Her final touch? 30,000 Swarovski Crystals!!! Claudia says her entire process took approximately 10 months to complete.\nBesides learning about fractals, Claudia also\u00a0learned by trial and error how to use mixed types of ink and paints and pens while making Fractal<\/em>. She commented, “I learned that it is hard to get rid of pencil drawings on silk.”\nWhen she received the news that\u00a0Fractal\u00a0<\/em>had won Best of Show, it was\u00a0around 5:00 AM in the morning in Germany. Claudia said she woke up “unintentionally” to check the time on her cellphone and saw that she had received several messages on Facebook telling her of her award. She went downstairs, opened her email and saw the official announcement from Road. Claudia said she was “shocked” when she found out she had won.\nWhere does Claudia go from here with her quilting? “I am working on my new project for 2018. I am bit behind my own time schedule this time. But the quilt is loaded on the machine and waiting to be quilted.\u00a0In May, I will travel to the USA\u00a0 to teach at several APQS Showrooms in Raleigh, Louisville, Austin and Dallas. In November, I will be at Quilt Festival in Houston and…. I am soooo hoping to be back at Road to California next year!”\nCongratulations Claudia Pfeil for your outstanding entry.\n \n\n\n

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\n\n]]>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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