Chosen by Quilters Newsletter Readers in 2009 as “America’s Best Quilting Teacher”, Elly had long been affectionately dubbed the “Queen of Appliqué.” Elly Sienkiewicz has been designing, stitching, creating fabric lines, writing, and teaching on quilts …from young motherhood into grandmother-hood. Author of 20 appliqué books (including the German translation), Elly received Quilt Industry’s 2003 Silver Star Award for significant influence on the contemporary quilt world. Her Appliqué 12 Easy Ways! decades in print, won the Quilt Industry Classics Award for Best Book on appliqué.

Her 20^th book (2010, C&T Publishing), Elly Sienkiewicz’s Beloved Baltimore Album Quilts, 25 patterns, 12 quilts, and Embellishment Techniques is both a luxurious in depth how-to book, a history book, and a picture catalogue to the 2010 exhibit which will travel with Quilts, Inc. for the year. Elly also has two exceptionally well-received DVDs. These and her latest book (and all her books in print) are available for ordering on www.AppliquéwithElly .com. The first DVD is Elly Sienkiewicz Teaches Beginning Baltimore Appliqué, the second is Elly Sienkiewicz Teaches Advanced Appliqué. The DVDs are filmed in Colonial Williamsburg on the site of the Elly Sienkiewicz Appliqué Academy®, an annual residential teaching conference held every February. They picture not only the blocks taught, but history, lessons on sets and borders, six variations on ruching and surprisingly personal interviews with Elly. Pattern and embellishment transfers are included in a CDRom portion of the DVDs.

From CABIN FEVER CALICOES®, a quilt shop by mail sold to new owners, to establishing the prestigious and popular ELLY SIENKIEWICZ APPLIQUE ACADEMY® celebrating 16 years in 2011, she remains an influential entrepreneur, artist, fabric designer, historian, author, and world renowned teacher.

During the heyday of her Baltimore Beauties® series, C&T Publishing sponsored two major Baltimore Album Revival Exhibitions to celebrate her books’ impact on the decades-long Appliqué and Baltimore Album Revival. Recognizing this impact, Quilts, Inc honored Elly with two individual Exhibitions: First of her early quilt making (Elly’s Silver Star Award exhibition in 2003), and next Elly’s group-made Baltimore Friendship Albums (“Baltimore Review II: Baltimore’s Daughters, Friends Stitch Past to Future” in 2010). Each show was accompanied by a larger juried show of work inspired by Elly and her books.

Elly Hamilton Sienkiewicz’s quiltmaking roots are in the hills of rural West Virginia: There her older Hamilton relatives shared that land’s heritage of handcraft, hospitality, and attachment to family and country. Though tested by Elly’s rarified Princeton, NJ upbringing and her own Ivy League education, it is this bedrock heritage that Elly cleaves to with the quilt-making she loves. It is here that Elly seeks beauty’s expression  – that love of beauty that her prize-winning artist mother – reserved, aristocratic, British-born - imbued in her from childhood.

Before becoming so deeply involved with group-made Albums, Elly’s individual work hung at shows across the country and at Museums and Galleries in and around Washington, DC, her home town. Inspiring as both a teacher and speaker, she has lectured for the Smithsonian Institution, across the country, and on five continents. Her work has been widely published in quilt magazines in the US, Europe, and Japan, and in The Magazine Antiques, Folk Art Magazine, Victoria, Country Living, Threads, and Uncoverings, Journal of the American Quilt Study Group. Her many books have been published by EZ-Wrights, AQS, and C & T. Her signature fabric lines have been printed by Robert Kaufman and currently by P & B Textiles. Elly is most grateful for the faith of these publishers, textile firms, and all who have sponsored her teaching, or taken her classes.

Teaching is Elly’s joy. She welcomes you: You'll find her classes

filled with tips, techniques, and flower-filled fun!