Anna Griffin has made her name synonymous with elegance and sophisticated design.

Gathering inspiration from antique engravings, European textiles and wallpaper and botanical prints, this Southern girl has built a successful business with her innate style. Now Anna’s new fabric lines from Windham Fabrics are winning hearts among quilters everywhere.

Most of Anna’s fabric designs are inspired by antique textiles and reinterpreted for today’s lifestyle. Anna’s collections of fabrics coordinate beautifully with home décor. Trained in graphic design, she looks at everything with an artist’s eye, and she’s a collector. “I’ve gone to antique markets once a month for 18 years and I work with a documentary expert in London. I’m constantly consulting old books, looking for old text, old botanicals. Unfortunately, I have such good taste I can’t afford myself,” she laughs.

But fortunately, when she’s interpreted these heady designs into quiltable fabrics, they’re easy to get and fun to use. After all, Anna has been sewing all her life, and was an active 4-H Club member. She learned to make her own clothes, take them to fairs, model them on runways.

Anna’s newest fabric lines range from “Bailey”, a brightly colored collection of animals and circus figures, to “Nina Wedding,” her signature collection of elegant pastels and platinum scrollwork. Her “Eliza” collection has an English-garden flavor; and retro-fresh “Elsie’s Kitchen” invites us into a cheerful 1950s kitchen. Coming up in May is another exciting collection, “Rose,” where our favorite flower gets the Anna Griffin touch, and her new book, Elegant Stitching, with patterns for quilts, pillows and handbags, is just out.

Griffin launched her business in Atlanta in 1994 with one-of-a-kind handmade wedding and event invitations. Her creations grew to include craft products, gifts and accessories, paper tableware and photo collections and china tableware.

Everything Anna sells is very “hands-on and quality-conscious.” For which, read exquisite and inspiring.