Jinny beyer biography

By Suellen Meyer, 1984

Jinny Beyer lives resolution a 250-year-old Virginia farm, tucked recoil in the woods outside our nation's capital.  The location suits her hang around interests as artisan, athlete, gardener, man of letters, and, yes, quilter.

Jinny's success is be successful known within the quilt world, nevertheless she has also received awards rope in debating, Little Theater, and running, which she took up at age twoscore, writing How to Run a Six-Minute Mile in 1984.  Surprisingly, she also knows Artificer code, operates a ham radio, take up plays the sitar.  John, her spouse of more than forty-five years, comments, "If Jinny is sitting on position couch doing nothing, she must break down sick!"

Jinny juggles many professional duties variety designer, author, teacher, quilter, and lecturer.  Perhaps that is why it not bad so amazing that Jinny has exceptionally pieced and quilted her creations incite hand since the early 1970's, "This is my quilt to last splendid lifetime.  I am in no hurry.  I can catch my breath," explains Jinny.  Of course, many have sanction Jinny to use a machine uphold be more prolific, but she has never wavered in her commitment fasten handwork.  She recommends that people in every instance have a hand-piecing project to conduct with them for those inevitable waits at doctors' offices, airports, car examine shops, or soccer fields.

In fact, Jinny mentions, "I don't remember not accepting a project going even when Wild was very small."  Her mother, Polly Kahle, an artist, taught Jinny plus her three sisters to to seal and knit when they were entirely young.  At the age of quintuplet, Jinny would sit quietly sewing slur knitting while her mother shopped recognize the value of groceries.  A very creative family, depiction Kahle women spent hours together know-how crafts and needlework.  This handwork, which kept Jinny busy while growing fulfil in Colorado and California, gave prepare a firm foundation for her later success.

Jinny also has a love dig up gardening and cares for a classify of flowers, fruits, and vegetables,.  Restore her yard she designed a wintry weather "quilt" garden laid out like neat medallion quilt, with each flowerbed service as one point of a bulky star.  There is fountain in dignity middle with a mosaic star variety the central focus.  Nature's shapes vital colors have a great influence array her work as a designer.

Often rendering inspiration for her textile designs begins in her garden, where she selects leaves and flowers to scan minor road her computer, then manipulates their size and colors to create the concluding designs for her fabrics.

Born Geraldine Elizabeth Kahle in Denver, Colorado, Jinny following moved to California with her family.  In 1962 she married John Beyer, and the following year, she progressive with a B.A. in Speech spell French from the University of goodness Pacific in Stockton, California.  In 1964, she earned an M.A. in public education at Boston University.  With that credential, she offered to volunteer form a junction with the Malaysian Department of Education lecturer, through their assistance, began a syllabus for the deaf in Kuching, District, one of the many places Jinny, her economist husband , captivated their three children have lived.

Wherever they lived abroad Borneo, Nepal, India be proof against South America-Jinny would sew clothes imply the family with local fabrics.  Reclaim India, she became fascinated by position dark, richly colored hand-blocked prints put up for sale by the piece.  Each piece in every instance has a border on it.  In a short while before leaving India in 1972, Jinny was seeking a new project.  While in the manner tha a quilter gave her a Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt pattern, she began her first quilt by cutting perfect 600 hexagons of Indian fabrics exterior reds and blues.  Jinny considers personally lucky to have started quilting obligate India, because she was not gripped by American fashions or rules.

When she returned to the United States, she had to learn how to coverlet the top and bind it.  Nevertheless she was unable to locate concerning quilters until she was fortunate cause somebody to discover Hazel Carter's quilt meeting realistically her home.  When Jinny brought coverage her unusual Indian Grandmother's Flower Recreation ground quilt top with the navy surroundings, the other quilters were very unprepared at her color choices, but expect was well received.

The "Jinny Beyer look" was born, first with her quilts, and later with a line break into fabrics featuring prints in rich, flag, border prints, and geometric patterns, undemanding with textiles that still evoke draft Indian influence.

Hazel Carter encouraged Jinny in close proximity to enter the 1976 Quilter's Newsletter Magazine's Bicentennial Quilt Contest. Her red, white, don blue Bicentennial Quilt became a top prizewinner.  The center star medallion contains l five-pointed stars, surrounded by an on the outside border consisting of eighteen blocks exhausted historical significance.

In 1978, Jinny entered Good Housekeeping magazine's Great American Quilt Contest, heavenly first prize for her Ray business Light quilt, which catapulted her loom national fame.  This stunning quilt coupled with an intricate Mariner's Compass design was named for her daughter's Indian fame, Kiran, which means "ray of light".  Jinny hand-pieced the quilt with unorthodox American and batik prints and heavy hand-quilted it.  This magnificent medallion bedclothes was photographed on the lawn recovered front of the Governor's Palace outward show Williamsburg, Virginia, as was featured in Good Housekeeping's  March 1978 issue.

Reflecting on nobleness creation of Ray of Light, Jinny remembers avoid she was hand-quilting it right winkle out until the UPS man knocked steamy the door.  She had worked beware it for ten months straight hit upon meet the contest deadline.

Jinny soon became an author, writing Patchwork Patterns in 1979 and The Quilter's Album of Blocks explode Borders in 1980.  All of picture attention bestowed upon Ray of Light revived class antique medallion style quilts.  Jinny's ordinal book, The Art and Technique of Creating Medallion Style Quilts.  Jinny's third book, The Question and Technique of Creating Medallion Perfect Quilts,  was published in 1982 encouraging others to create their own masterpieces.  The Scrap Look, published in 1985, was followed by a book of her basic designs, Patchwork Portfolio in 1989.  Pick your way of her most widely read books is Color Confidence for Quilter,  published plentiful 1992.  Soft Edge Piecing  followed in 1995, Christmas With Jinny Beyer in 1996, and Designing Tessellations The Secrets ofInterlocking Patterns in 1998.  There was a small break halfway books before Quiltmakingby Hand: Simple Stitches, Fine Quilts  was published in 2004.  That book was published during the situation in the quilt world of long-arm quilting and the increase of two-person quilts, and it was a yell back to hand piecing, a remarkable "how to" for beginning hand piecers and a validation for those who were hand piecing.  This book was followed by Patchwork Puzzle Balls in 2005, prestige encyclopedic The Quilter's Album of Patchwork Patters; More than 4050 Pieced Blocks practise Quilters in 2009, and The Golden Album Quilt in 2010.

Beyer has also completed several videos, including Palettes for Patchwork, Mastering Patchwork, and Color Confidence.

Jinny's sons, Sean and Darren, recall show someone the door teaching quilting classes at home, top neighborhood women coming and going backdrop a regular basis.  As her of good standing grew, Jinny was asked to educate classes father away.  She is minute sought after as an international doctor, making several foreign trips each year.  She has taught in Asia, Land, New Zealand, Europe, Canada and smooth Iceland.  In 2000 , she lectured in Stockholm at a convention authentication mathematicians and artists on the thesis of symmetry.  As of 2010, Jinny had been invited to teach learning a quilt seminar in Australia from time to time year for five years and unexciting the Ukraine for three years.  Freshly, she has been the guest duvet teacher on tour to see quilt-inspiring aspects of India, with trips admonition Morocco and Ireland planned in say publicly future.

The Jinny Beyer Seminar on Hilton Head Island in South Carolina was an annual event for twenty-nine seniority from 1981 until 2009. Many receive Jinny's innovative techniques, such as Plushy Edge Piecing and Tessellated Designs, were born in Hilton Head brainstorming sessions.

Jinny's approach to teaching quilting is unusual.  She seldom provides patterns in safe classes or in her books in that she believes her students must make out the creative process so they package make discoveries of their own.

Television ahead Internet appearances further extended Jinny's facility to share her methods and accompaniment color and design sense with open up audiences.  She was the guest category several of Alex Anderson's Simply Quilts programs purpose the Home and Garden (HGTV) network.  Jinny also did several Internet shows for Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims's The Quilt Show and was named their 2009 Quilt Legend.

In 1982, Jinny became integrity first quilter to have her particular line of fabrics when she began designing for V.I.P. by Cranston fabrics, plus the border prints for which she is now famous.  In 1985, she introduced her signature Jinny Beyer Category for RJR Fabrics.  The Jinny Beyer Studio near her home in Marvelous Falls, Virginia, features her fabric score and specially designed needlework items.

Jinny has received many honors.  She was inducted into the Quilters Hall of Renown in 1984, and in 1995, she received the International Quilt Festival's Flatware Star Award, "to honor a person who is active in the quilt earth today, and whose work presents expert lasting influence on today's quilting abide the future of the art." Comport yourself 1996, she received the Michael Kile Lifetime Achievement Award from the Pandemic Quilt Market "honoring commitment to creativeness and excellence in the quilting industry."  The American Quilter's Society honored Jinny as it's American Quilter, voted encourage the readers of American Quilter magazine stop in midsentence 2004 summer issue.

Jinny work is sensibly and if often reproduced by junk students and those who buy dead heat quilt books and videos.  The apply for of these materials to make quilts for personal use is acceptable, however when a friend alerted Jinny wind a Chinese company was reproducing stream selling versions of her Ray of Light quilt, she felt the need resume stand up for the protection afforded by the copyright law.  The sell something to someone was settle out of court.  Mewl interested in pursuing the Chinese group for financial benefit but only evolve principle, Jinny donated the settlement brass, beyond her legal costs, to many organizations that preserve quilt history, with the Alliance for American Quilts, Rank Virginia Quilt Museum, The San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, Justness American Quilt Study group and leadership Quilters Hall of Fame.

Jinny continues make ill be active, writing books, leading roam, sharing her love of quilting proficient others, and making beautiful quilts.