Ana Buzzalino talks to us about her stunning quilts and her inspirations.
So many choices! Special thanks to the MBQG members who always bring such amazing desserts!
Ana Buzzalino was truly a wonderful choice for our 14th "extraordinary quilter" this year. She joins a long list of extraordinary quilters who have come to our Guild. We started out with our annual Dessert Party on Wed night, a huge smorgasbord of desserts made by our members. Everything from yummy cookies and squares to cakes and delicious exotic concoctions! We are trying hard to make a variety of desserts available to everyone so we included some gluten free and diabetic friendly desserts as well as fruit salads. Every one was delicious from the looks of all the clean plates!
Many thanks to our donors Suttles and Seawinds, Atlantic Fabrics, The Eclectic Garage, MBQG and our annonymous donors who generously donated the door prizes!
We love to include the girls group who come to help serve and clean up. They do a great job!
After dessert, Ana presented her trunk show – the quilts and wallhangings kept coming, too many to count! Each one so unique and using many techniques that Ana has developed herself. The embellishments/bead work was exquisite and her machine quilting was something to behold. The depth and quantity of stiching was quite remarkable, no wonder she has won so many awards, each one well deserved. Judging by the crowds who flocked to see the quilts up close, I wasn't the only one who was impressed. I also loved that she added a lot of handwork to her quilts, combining machine quilt and hand stitching just made the quilts.
Sunflowers on the Dark Side of the Moon
Ana loves the New York Beauty pattern, she has developed her own way of sewing it to get those points! I hope she will come back and teach this one day soon!
Two of Ana's "Simple Landscapes"
Kate piecing her curved landscape background.
Ana taught two workshops for us, the first was "Simple Landscapes" a one day workshop that combined machine pieced curved landscapes with painted embellishments. She made it look so easy! I can't wait to practice and to try harder with my machine quilting. She likes to keep her stitches 1/8" – 1/4" apart!
Ana helping Cathy with her design.
The second workshop was a two day workshop on "Curved Piecing". Everyone brought their own inspriation to draw from and created an original design. Many methods of embellishing were discussed and demonstrated from painting using paint sticks to stamping and much more.
What a productive and creative place!
I found her approach to be very inspirational, very easy going such that anyone could accomplish their own unique and original design.
Be sure and check out Ana's website here. We hope she will come back to NS soon, a little bribery with some lobster might help!
Ana enjoyed her fresh NS lobster!
Be sure and go here to our Flickr pages to see lots more pictures from the Dessert Party and both workshops.
All of the quilts are absolutely beautiful. Would love to see more of what you ladies do. I belong to the Peninsula Quilt Guild of San Mateo, California but am originally from Liverpool, Nova Scotia. I have a cousin who lives in Mahone Bay and love to come there whenever I come home for a visit. Am glad this was posted.