Who is Patt Blair?
Artist Patt Blair has been involved in some form of visual or written creative expression since her mid teens using oils, brush and pen lettering, and in the 70s, discovered the joy and spontaneity of watercolors. Her full-time left brain (telecommunications) work, coupled with college and children, limited her visual arts creativity from the 80s and into the next decade. By the mid 90s, she began weekend morning walks in the park with friends who were quilters.
After a year or so of not knowing what the heck they were talking about, she decided to learn a bit about this quilting thing. Alas, she was not a skilled traditional quilter and admittedly did not like it much because of limited fabric choices and color selections. "I think I’d already had too many years wandering around in traditional art media to start fitting into even a partial pre-plan", she said. "I was previously ruined. I do love traditional quilts and have great respect and appreciation of quilters that piece and appliqué." Patt stumbled upon a 2-day painting-with-dye class in 2001. At last, she could resurrect use of some paint brushes. Soon as she figured out how to marry up earlier painting experiences with fabric, she was in heaven. It was for the joy of the challenge of enhancing a quilt top with various machine stitches. And thread...it was just linear painting! She loved it! While continuing to develop her skills using varied media and interests in 2003, she began competing and placing in local and nationally judged contests.
To feed the passion of this new art form, she decided to grow and find more people of similar interests, through teaching it in 2004. Patt loves the classroom environment. There’s something magical about the harmony that materializes in a room of quilters at work," she says. "It’s a peaceful, playful rhythm. It’s just plain fun. It’s important to me that people in my classes relax, have fun, learn, and conclude class with a sense of accomplishment and pride."
