Local Quilter Publishes Third Book

As a little girl, Ann Fahl of Mount Pleasant dreamed of becoming a ballet dancer. Decades later, she says she is dancing – but not with her feet, with thread.

A quilter since 1978, Fahl is an entrepreneur who designs, sews and sells quilts from her home studio. In addition, she shares her love of quilts and sewing through her books.

 “From my very first quilting class I realized I could do my own thing. I was never interested in taking someone else’s patterns and making them,” she said.  “There was really no big surprise, no adventure, in that. I like that idea that you kind of never know where a design is going to end up.”

It was the same with her cat, Oreo, a stray who has become a focal point of her quilting. Fahl created colorful patterns of Oreo in various antics of feline life, from Christmas tree scenes, garden and household settings, and portraits.

“This wild black-and-white cat set foot on our front door, and this cat just blew us away,” said Fahl. “We adopted her in 2000 after we had lost our old kitty. Because of Oreo’s black-and-white color scheme, it makes her such a high contrast (design).”

In her most recent book, A Black and White Tale, Fahl shares pictures of 22 of her cat quilts, and light-hearted stories written by a poet she discovered in one of her favorite online quilting forums.

“A woman - Jackie Scuitto - always wrote these neat little poems about whatever it was we were talking about online. I’ve never been much for poetry, but one of my favorites has always been Dr. Seuss,” Fahl said. “I wrote her and asked if she would be interested in writing poetry to go along with some of my cat books, and Jackie has cats so it was a pretty good fit.”

Her friend, Sally Miller, helped her design the book and then Fahl self-published it.

“I always loved to sew,” she said. “My degree was textiles and clothing from UW-Madison. Literally the thread has been there most of my life.”

After college, Fahl set she set out to be “a rich and famous business owner.”

She worked in retail for several fabric chains, including Marshall Field and Gimbals, before forming her own business, Creative Sewing. That was more than 30 years ago, and since then, Fahl has found her niche in quilting, and her works are available for sale online at www.annfahl.com. She published two books, Coloring With Thread, and Dancing With Thread, through a craft and sewing publisher, in 2005 and 2010. A Black and White Tale is expected to arrive from the publisher this week and will be for sale on her website too.

“I called that one Dancing With Thread because it is about stitching all the three layers on the machine, not by hand,” Fahl said. “It’s like me. I’m dancing with my sewing machine.”