Hooked on Quilting’s Cindy Anderson at the Sharp End of Needlework with Dermot Kavanagh
Family Affair
Cindy Anderson has been in business as Hooked on Quilting for more than seven years, operating from the first floor of her gorgeous antebellum home in Fayetteville. Here, quilters can avail of a great selection of cotton fabrics by the likes of Robert Kaufman, Moda and Red Rooster, to name but a few. Te second floor is the living quarters for Cindy and her family. Speaking of family, Cindy's 16-year-old daughter Victoria has been sewing for the better part of a decade. She prefers embroidery at the moment as it is portable and more suited to such an active teen. Te quality of her hand-stitching is such that people often assume it to be machine stitching.
Sewing the Seeds
As far as Hooked on Quilting’s philosophy goes, sharing and encouraging the love of quilting and sewing in young people is paramount in keeping these art forms vibrant and growing. Cindy believes it vital to encourage the young to take up quilting and needlecraft, to take up the baton from the older generation and bring their own methods and ideas to the sewing room.
It's better to use good fabric than to waste valuable time on inferior cloth
A small fly in the honey is the occasional reluctance of older quilters to try out newer methods; to leave their “comfort zone”. A case in point was the Harmonic Convergence workshop taught by Ricky Tims in April 2005. Only a few of Cindy's local quilt guild attended but her own children Victoria and Nathaneal, then aged 10 and 12, took to Ricky Tims' tuition like ducks to water, making their version of the quilt he taught. Nathaneal's quilt featured the masculine images of tigers glaring through bushes, as is appropriate for a boy-quilter.
Indeed, as Cindy proudly notes, Victoria has tutored ladies 30 years her senior in the art of hand-stitching! One is never too old to learn, no matter that there be such an age gap. A great example of cross-pollination to and fro between younger and older quilters is the relationship between Victoria and Miss Martha who, in her 70s, is surrogate grandma to Victoria. Seeing them sitting sewing and chatting is described as “awesome” by Cindy.
44 Irish Quilting Issue 16
Harmonic Convergence
A quilting method developed by musician/ quilter Ricky Tims, Harmonic Convergence is when two or more hand-dyed fabrics are cut into strips and sewn together, then cut and pieced again. It looks complex but actually this method is quite fun and easy to make.