Nina-Marie! Quilter's Meet & Greet

My Studio in the former front parlor of my house

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Hi!!  Benita was gracious enough to invite me to her Quilter's Meet  & Greet!!  I thought it a brilliant idea as a way to meet some new quilters and introduce them to my blog.

Sooooo, I'm Nina-Marie and I live in a small town outside of Erie, Pennsylvania where its gorgeous three seasons a year.  The other season only snow mobilers and ice fisherman enjoy.  My husband Paul is an artisan woodworker when he's not baking and my college age daughter, Tessa has minors in Creative Writing and Drama.  So needless to say, we're a creative household.

My First Art Quilt made in a Joan Colvin's Class

I started quilting 25 years ago by mistake when I received a quilt book in the mail.  Since I love quilts, I decided to make one of them thinking, "How hard can it be??"  That  was the beginning of a life long passion.  Over the years, I've explored  pretty much every aspect of quilting there is and love  them all equally.  Each new project I did, taught me something new...and I'm still learning. 

This was made from my own hand dyed and hand painted fabrics

This was a Do-Over Piece from the original

This blog acts not only as my on-going creative journal, but also as a way that I can pass on what I've learned.  Seven years into my quilting journey, I made the leap into art quilting.  Since my degree is in Engineering, I had NO idea what I was doing.  In fact, I thought that you needed to be VERY artsy to make such amazing art quilts I saw in magazines and online.  What I learned  was that although you do need some artistic knowledge,those quilts were the products of years of learning and a lot of hard work.  It wasn't magic.  This blog is here to document that journey.

This was a block of the month quilt from Quilter's Newsletter I learned so much!!

Quilting is very personal to me. To me, its not just another fad craft.    Although of late, I’ve been doing mostly art quilting, I still love to traditional quilt.  I’ve made mega-projects completely by hand before (I have one in the works still!) and I love, love, love hand quilting.  I was a 20,30 something quilter before it was fashionable to be one.  People would say “Why do you spend all your time and money cutting up perfectly good fabric and hanging out with old ladies?”  I’d laughed at them  – point to a creations that was uniquely mine and say, “Why not?  Now that I'm finally aging into the quilting crowd , quilting seems second nature.

This is my favorite pattern quilt because I love the use of gradations

My favorite art quilt because its reminds me of summer

Because I'm working full time now (I'm a sales representative for ladies catalogs - so I help ladies shop over the phone) I don't have time to blog as much as I'd like.  I do however host a blog link up that is mostly aimed at art quilters (but any quilter is welcome) every Friday called -

 Off the Wall Fridays.  We're a pretty informal lot and anybody is welcome to link a creative post any week.  The Link up starts every Friday morning - midnight EStime and ends at the end of the day on Monday.

I'm so glad to take this time to introduce myself and show off some of my work.  I encourage you to visit Benita's Meet & Greet to get know more quilters!!  

My favorite  abstract quilt so far....I love the colors of it