Virginia Schnalle
Virginia Schnalle completed her first quilt in 1990, for which she received an honorable mention award from the Marin Quilt and Needle Arts Show. Since 1991 Virginia has been teaching various beginning and intermediate quilting classes at local quilt shops. Virginia has also taught workshops at quilting retreats and for quilt guilds. Her interests lie mostly in the contemporary/art quilt area.
A long-time member of CQFA (Contemporary Quilt Fiber Artists), Virginia is also a member of The National Quilting Association and the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles. You can contact Virginia at vschnalle1@comcast.net".
Some of Virginia's quilts have been featured in publications such as The New Sampler Quilt (©1993), and Crazy with Cotton (©1996), by Diana Leone, and in Basic Seminole Patchwork (©1990) by Cheryl Bradkin. While working on a joint quilt project titled "And Now We Know Our A-B-Cs...", Virginia and her daughter Kathy (Galos) Mae codeveloped a technique (which they called Patchlique) of combining the piecing and appliqueing of different parts of one piece of fabric in a block in order to avoid cutting up unique figures printed in the fabric. An article on this technique appeared in the June 1992 issue of Quilter's Newsletter Magazine. One of Virginia's small art quilts was pictured in the Fall 2001 edition of the Journal of the National Quilting Association, in an article entitled "Reaching Forward, Reaching Back: The Art Quilt Movement." The article also featured a separate write up entitled "A Look at One Art Quilt Group: Contemporary Quilts and Fiber Artists (CQFA)".
Virginia seldom enters her quilts in competitions, however, two of her small quilts (a landscape: "Miss Kitty's Garden Gateway" and a Halloween quilt: "Come into My Parlor") were awarded second place ribbons in the 1997 Marin Quilt and Needle Arts Show. Two of Virginia's quilts have been selected to appear in a 2007 quilt calendar, published by Browntrout Publishers, Inc.
Quilts
"Amish Legacy" was one of my first large quilts (it is about a double bed size). I made it in a sampler class (one of the first quilt classes I ever took) taught by my daughter Kathy in which she taught us to draft quilt block patterns and to piece them by hand. The finished quilt was featured on page 27 of Diana Leone’s book “the New Sampler Quilt” copyright 1993.
CQFA Round Robin. This quilt is the result of a CQFA Round Robin. We each made a couple of starter blocks then rotated those, along with a bit of our fabric and suggested design samples. Participants then made a few blocks and passed every thing on to the next CQFA round robin participant. I was very pleased with all the blocks when they were returned to me. And I was especially pleased with the result when I put them all together. My son loved the finished quilt and said “I have dibs on this one.” So a couple of years ago I finally gave it to him as a Christmas gift.
Round Robin bag. This little bag is the result of a Round Robin in a Day when I was on a quilt retreat at Asilomar, Pacific Grove, CA. It was quick and fun and I was happy enough with the results of everyone’s additions to my starting block (a little free motion machine embroidered tree) that I went home and made this little bag out of it..