Colorado Quilting Council is well known nationally for sponsoring quilting symposiums dating back to 1982. They always furnish innovative and well-known quilters as teachers for the offered classes. I attended the first symposium in 1982, and it was a mind-blowing experience with such teachers as Jinny Beyer, Chris Wolf Edmonds, Jeffrey Gutcheon, Roberta Horton to name a few. This was before we had access to the internet's learning opportunities, and this was a BIG deal.
Then in the mid-1980s, I went to Houston's quilt festival a couple of times and to other conferences in neighboring states meeting teachers and making friends.
So by the time the Colorado 1988 symposium rolled around, I was a seasoned quilt festival attendee. It was a time to meet up with old friends and have fun in addition to sharpening my quilting skills.
At the closing banquet of the 1988 event, Quilter's Newsletter Magazine gave away samples of their Rainbow fabrics -- one of the first collections of solids offered. I was fortunate enough to win a large stack of squares. Since I had always been interested in signature quilts, I had friends and teachers sign the fabric.
I held onto those signatures until 1998, when I was writing a book on signature quilts. I decided then it was time to do something with these treasures, and made this quilt using a crazy quilt format naming it "Crazy Friends". Among the noted signatures are:
Doreen Speckmann - always had a new idea and offered fun classes. Catherine Anthony - a pioneer quilt store owner in Texas and the mother of famous quilter, Libby Lehman.
Blanche Young - another innovative technician with her daughter, and a master of the multi-fabric quilt. I learned so much in her classes.
Vivian Ritter - a longtime editor at Quilter's Newsletter Magazine, and mainly responsible for the
publishing of my quilts in QNM.
