Designer Spotlight

Sandra Banava was introduced to the beauty of fabric at an early age. Her mother was a fabric lover, who kept her collection lovingly wrapped up in a couple of huge bundles filled with cuts of fabric that she had receive d as gifts or hand-picked for her sewing projects. From time to time, Sandra’s mother would say, “Let’s get the fabric bundles out and look at fabric.” To Sandra, this was always as exciting as opening a treasure box.

Sandra made her first contact with the exuberant world of fabric design through the ancient Persian art of hand-block printing on silk. She carved her first design into a block of wood, bathed that carving in warm wax, positioned it in place and pressed it onto the luscious fabric. As she repeated the process – dip, position, press — the pattern appeared through layers of color, shapes and texture, and Sandra had discovered a whole new visual poetry.

Sandra finds designing for quilters exciting. She likes to visualize how quilters can “compose,” “paint” or “choreograph” their quilts using each colorful pattern as “notes,” “paints” and “movements” to tell their stories. Read more

Quilting questions answered
by our own Margrit Hall.

This month, Margrit starts off the new year by answering questions about diagonal quilting, outer border rippling, proper seam allowance, and much, much more.
Read more in this month's
Ask Margrit column