Showcasing the art as well as the sewing machine techniques, this compendium reveals the work of the nature-inspired art quilt work of Ellen Anne Eddy. Her wall art goes beyond the traditional concept of quilting; she includes fish, bugs, birds, and frogs throughout her art, blending her dreams and vision with the natural world. She uses hand-dyed fabrics, lames, machine embroidery, cut-away applique, and layered sheers to create the illusion of flames, water, and mist in her work. The gallery of quilts features both full images and detailed shots, and Ellen's quilts are divided into several series and themes, with each section offering her inspiration for that theme.
Ellen has spent most of her life teaching, writing or working with fabric, and now she's come to a point where all occupations blend. She grew up in Streator, IL and went to college at Knox College in Galesburg, Il and did some graduate studies at Boston State University. She began quilting in response to a gift from a neighbor who saved a quilt top from one of her mother's cleaning fits, and gave it to her, quilted, once she was grown. It was such an inspiration that she has been quilting ever since. She currently teaches for quilt guilds and conferences across the country, a series of fiber art courses called Thread Magic, covering all kinds of machine embroidery techniques for quilters. She lives at her studio in the Indiana Dunes area with four cats, Ivy Gray Grace, Ariane Growltiger, Nyamoto of the Iron Paw, and Hercule Pirot, detective way under cover, and three greyhounds, Carra, Candace Canis, and Bedelia Birdy Buttercup and Gryphon Raven's Wing, all of whom are all very involved with Ellen's work, and have long since taken over quality control.
Her book, Thread Magic- The Enchanted World of Ellen Anne Eddy, was republished by Quilting Arts. She has written for numerous fiber arts publications, including Quilting Arts, American Quilter, and Quilter's Newsletter, Threads and Fiber Arts. She's recently begun her own publishing house and has just published Dragonfly Sky, a step by step bobbin work project book, and Tigrey Leads the Parade, an embroidered story about her first greyhound, Tigrey, who was regularly chased by the whole town of Porter, Indiana, any time he ran away.
