Meet...

Elly Sienkiewicz

www.ellysienkiewicz.com



Elly's love of quilts and her initial instruction in making them came from those West Virginia relatives whom she has visited with a comforting regularity all of her life. Degrees from Wellesley College and the University of Pennsylvania led to a teaching career (history, social studies, and English) before staying at home with her three young children. Pursuing a number of entrepreneurial endeavors from home, she eventually taught quiltmaking and for seven years ran a mail-order quilt supply business. Already in some demand from her first book, Spoken Without a Word, Elly took a brief respite from teaching and lecturing to become a tour guide for historic Washington, D.C. Refreshed and reinspired, she began to research, write, design, teach, and lecture again - mode she's continued in happily ever since. Elly lives in our nation's capital with her husband, Stan, and their children, Donald, Alex, and Katya.

Before she became so deeply involved with group-made Album Quilts, Elly's individual work had been shown at Quilt Shows across the country and at Glen Echo-The National Art Park, The Textile Museum, The Decatur House, The Art Barn in Rock Creek National Par, and The Decorators Showcase in Chevy Chase, Maryland. She is widely respected both as a needlewoman and as a scholar with insightful perceptions into quiltmaking history. Her research into antique ribbon folds and flowers have honed her expertise in ribbonwork for applique.

Consumed by the ongoing question of why we love quiltmaking so, Elly is a delightfully encouraging teacher and an inspiring lecturer. Attesting to this fact, she teaches from the nearby Smithsonian Institution to across the nation and on to five continents. Her work and articles are widely published in major quilt magazines and in such places as Victoria, Folk Art Magazine, Threads, and The Magazine Antiques. Elly says she is never happier than when she is teaching, and that happiness is contagious!


1998 "Baltimore Album Revival" Exhibition and Contest

Elly Sienkiewicz has been designing and making quilts, studying, writing and teaching on quiltmaking for twenty-two years. Her creativity, research, and irrepressible enthusiasm have fueled 11 books (1996) on applique, Albums, and ribbonwork. A major 1998 "Baltimore Album Revival" Exhibition and Contest celebrates this fact. FOr a contest entry form, send a SASE to:

1998 BAR! Contest
c/o Joyce Lyttle
C&T Publishing
5021 Blum Road
Martinez, California 94553


Classes and Lectures

For Elly's teaching prospectus, write to her at:

5540 30th Street, NW,
Washington, DC 20015

Her classes range from craft classes (cloth on paper greetings and ribbon ornament), to "Applique 12 Easy Ways!", to beginning Baltimore Album Applique, on to lots more Baltimore blocks, and ribbon flowers. Her newest courses incorporate silk ribbon embroidery into traditional Baltimore Album blocks along with Ultrasueder and beading for a modish elegance. Elly gives a great lecture on "What is this fascination with Baltimore's Album Quilts?", another called "Why was there not more ribbon in Baltimore's classic Albums?", and a memorable one called "Recollections of my South African Quilt Safari".


Elly's Books

Spoken Without a Word

A Lexicon of symbols plus 24 classic Baltiimore Album block patterns

To Order this book, send $24.00 check made out to Elly Sienkiewicz to 5540 30th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20015.

Baltimore Beauties and Beyond

Studies in Classic Album Quilt Applique, Volume I

Unquestionably the most comprehensive book on how to do hand applique in print today. This book is clearly and copiously illustrated, and spakrles with 16 pages of color. Elly's patterns for making 29 blocks lead from beginner simplicity to complex classic applique. Basic details of perfect points, corners, curves, and invisible stitches lead the reader through Victorian fancywork like ruching, then right up to the moren ease of applique with the "freezer paper on top" method. This book will surely become a needlework classic.


Baltimore Album Quilts, Historic Notes and Antique Patterns

A Pattern Companion to Baltimore Beauties and Beyond, Studies in Classic Album Quilt Applique, Volume I

An intimate portrait, Baltimore Album Quilts, draws the historic period, the quilts, and their makers closer to us all. The lively text stages both quilts and design motifs in a dramatic historic era. Fifty-two spectacular color plates, most of antique needleart, proffer insights into this nineteenth-century quilt tradation. In clear closeup photography, they reveal antique fabric use, period embroidery, and subtleties of individual presentations. With integrity and artistry, a spendid fifty-six patterns for making fifty-eight 'beyond Baltimore" blocks are presented. Each one is referenced to applique lessons in Volume I, whose pattern companion this book is. Ten exciting classes using this book as text are outlined and may be taught in workshops or taken independently. Whether for a grat read, or as a scholarly reference, or to create an Album heairloom of your own, this volume, itself, is certain to become a treasured possession.


Baltimore Beauties and Beyond

Studies in Classic Album Quilt Applique, Volume II

Insightful and abundantly illustrated, this volume probes both the design secrets and the origins of the classic Baltimore-style Album quilt. A gallery of fifty full quilts inspire lessons on picture blocks, Victorian inkwork, and sets and borders. Forty-five color plates and numerous design resources spin out the Album Quilt saga. The author's infectious enthusiasm, and her impressive, well-researched familiarity with the genre, plus thirty-three patterns (twenty for blocks, thirteen for borders), invite the reader "beyond" Baltimore. Here scholarship, artistry, and entertaining text embrace a glorious quilt tradition for all of us to share and to make our own.


Applique 12 Easy Ways!

Charming Quilts, Giftable Projects, and Timeless Techniques

This book teaches you how to do hand applique simply. Great drawingss show exactly how it's done. Even a beginner can make the cover quilt. "You've Stolen My Heart!" A you sew, you'll learn a lifetime of applique skills in just a few evenings. See your points, curves, and corners improve, heart by heart. While you create the pillow "Dutch Bulbs a' Bloomin," you'll perfect superfine stems, folded flowers, layered applique, and smooth round grapes. You'll be astonished at how much you learn so quickly.


Design a Baltimore Album Quilt!

A Teach-Yourself Course in Sets and Borders

A Design Companion to Baltimore Beauties and Beyond, Studies in Classic Album Quilt Applique, Volume II

Rightly, we regard our Album Blocks as heirlooms in themselves. That next step, setting then into breathtaking Album Quilts, can be intimidating. This book demystifies the design ideas behind their sets and borders, so that your Album, too, can be an heirloom masterpiece.


Dimensional Applique, Baskets, Blooms, and Baltimore Borders

A Pattern Companion to Baltimore Beauties and Beyond, Studies in Classic Album Quilt Applique, Volume II

Quick Victorian cushions, an heirloom quilt, or fresh floral jewels easy enough to craft with young friends and family? Beautiful projects, clear illustrations, and a workbook approach ensure your success in Dimensional Applique.


Baltimore Album Revival!

Historic Quilts in the Making

Cataloue of the 1994 C &T Baltimore Album Revival Quilt Show and Contest

This book celebrates a contemporary quilt movement vivid in its vitality, worldwide in its popularity, and yet to peak after more than a decade-long hold. Quiltmakers have stitched the antebellum Baltimore Album Quilt style beautifully beyond its Victorian heyday.


Baltimore Beauties and Beyond

Studies in Classic Album Quilt Applique, Volume III


Applique 12 Borders &Medallions

Patterns from Easy to Heirloom

A Pattern Companion to Baltimore Beauties and Beyond, Studies in Classic Album Quilt Applique, Volume III

Applique is flowering! Its heyday is here, once again -- and all those quilts a-coming will need the perfect border. Even patchwork blooms brighter with an applique border. If you love the look, yearn to learn -- or already applique -- gift yourself (or another special someone) with this basic quilt resource book. There's nothing like its 12 complete border and medallion patterns. There are classics, ones whose patterns belong in every quiltmaker's library. With them, you can applique 12 full borders and medallions -- a legacy by any measure!


To order the above books, call C&T Publishing, 1-800-284-1114 , write to:

C&T Publishing
PO Box 1456
Lafayette, CA 94549

or visit the C&T web site, http://www.dnai.com:80/~ctpub/


Elly's 1996 book, "Romancing Ribbons into Flowers, A Source and Inspiration for Quilts and Ornament, by America's Premiere Ribbon Artist", will be published by EZ International/Quilt House Publishing (95 Mayhill Street, PO Box 895 Saddlebrook, N.J. 07662 -ask to be put on their publication announcement mailing list. Fax 201-712-1199)


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