Greetings from Germany,

My name is Claudia Pfeil (46 years), living in Krefeld/Germany. As a Mom of two wonderful boys (Julian, 15years and Lukas, 10 years), quilt shop owner, passionate piecer and longarm-quilter I’m completely addicted to the exciting world of patchwork and quilting!

I’ve studied Design of Textiles at the local university and worked in an atelier drawing designs for interior textiles for several years. I started my "career" in teaching patchwork and quilting after my first son was born in 1992. My students asked where to buy original patchwork fabrics and I thought; Ok...let’s do it... and I opened a Quilt-Shop! Nothing was planned, very spontaneous – just learning by doing, but creative and fulfilled with ambitions and excitement!

My first quilt I’ve sent to an European Competition – European Quilt championships in the Netherlands - was a Watercolor – quilt in 2002, quilted on my Bernina DSM machine – it won third place in "Public Choice". Up to this moment I won in 2004 1st place "Public Choice" with a landscape quilt named “Hidden Forest" – still quilted on my DSM machine. Today I regret that I haven’t had a chance to have it quilted on a Longarm since receiving my APQS Longarm Millennium in spring 2005!

In 2006 I won 1st place in "Advanced Quilts" at the European Quilt Championships /Netherlands and 2007 1st place in "Longarm-Quilting". My first teacher’s ribbon in USA was at MQS/Kansas in 2005 with my very first quilt after 6 weeks of quilting on the APQS Longarm – I was soooo proud! In 2006 I’ve won three teacher’s ribbons at MQS and a second place at the "Fashion Show" with my garment.

My Quilt" Turnabout" is based on some ideas "floating" in my head after hearing the theme of "Timeless Stars" at MQS 2006. First scribbles (drawings) were done right after the show, but it took me more than half a year to piece all those tiny silk pieces. (Quilt in progress pictures!).

The theme block is called "Turnabout T" from 1930. This block inspired me to use a single block as the beginning. The row of stars was my vision of the old style newspapers going from black and white cubes to the full colored stars. The swirls of brilliant colored Flying Geese symbolize this pattern reaching quilters from all over the world - even to Germany to me! Seeing these designs and incorporating them into their own style of quilts.

The piecing -techniques used are: paper piecing the Flying Geese, Stars and swirls on water-soluble paper, appliquéd on the black background out of silk, "framed" those applications with black bias couched on with the APQS Longarm Millennium.

The border of the stars and the black and white border were completed in the beginning, but the wish to "overlay" this border was already in my head!

The quilting was done using Rainbow and Highlight Threads from Superior Threads, the free motion quilting inside the stars, the Flying Geese and the swirls, Razzle Dazzle (three times couched) for the outlines. A stencil (pattern) was used for the background fills (basket) and filled it with tiny free motion feathers.

As an embellishment I’ve put roundabout 23000 Swarowski crystals (minimum size!) on the front and on the backside of the quilt! It took me more than two weeks to put them on to the quilt!

It was sooooooo much fun!!!