What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

As many of you know, I am a member of Cloth in Common. A couple of weeks ago, I shared all of my quilts from Round One.

Our Cloth in Common founder, Karol Kasmaul  ,has created a book for purchase that shares the group’s journey through the first round of prompts. You can order that book here.  I volunteered to write a blog post about the book on the Cloth in Common blog. It is the least I could do considering I am the reason Karol had to wait so long to complete the book! THIS blog post is ...

Many of you may know that I am a member of Cloth in Common. We are an international quilt group. Every two months one members shares a prompt for all of us to use as inspiration for creating new work.

Our ROUND ONE of working together lasted 22 months and included 11 prompts—one from each member. The underlying theme for these prompts was Unusual.

Perhaps my Cloth in Common name should be Notoriously Slow, as I am constantly struggling to keep up with the pace of the group.

We are now well into the Round Two prompts which have ...

On December 27, 2012, I began this blog. 

The me that started Tales of Stitcher was afraid of technology—I still used a flip phone! I was incredibly nervous about sharing my life and my work in such a public format. Since then, the world has changed dramatically. Even dogs and cats have social media accounts.

Blog reading has decreased, but I don’t think that means that blogs aren’t important. Committing to writing a blog is one of the best things I have done for my career as a quilt maker, writer, and teacher. Want to get clear ...

The Year in Quilts 2010 was really about processing what my first three weeks of study with Nancy Crow were all about. 

The Year in Quilts 2011 is about the beginning of several essential explorations—you might call them series—that continue to be part of my practice eight years later.

In 2009, we purchased an almost 100 year old cabin in McCarthy, Alaska a small mountain village located in the Wrangell St. Elias National Park. 

Over the years, I have tried to document that landscape in my own way.

This documentation has resulted in the workshop Abstraction through Color ...

2010 was a big year in quilting for me.

In 2009, I received a Rasmuson Project Award to travel to Ohio and study with Nancy Crow for three weeks. Thank you Rasmuson Foundation for supporting and believing in Alaskan artists.

I have written about my adventures studying with Nancy Crow many times. If you would like to share in that experience, you can by reading the following blog posts.

A Message from the Barn
Crow Barn Week One
Crow Barn Week Two Part One
Crow Barn Week Two Part Two
Crow Barn Week Three
Crow Barn Reflections
Crow Barn Week ...

No, that’s not a typo. I sat down this morning to write the blog post The Year in Quilts 2019.

The first step was to see how I had structured this blog post in the past. I went to my ABOUT page and typed in Year in Quilts.

In my mind, I have been writing a Year in Quilts blog post since the beginning of this blog, which began on December 27, 2012. Seven years ago! 

This morning, I discoverd that I have actually only written a Year in Quilts blog post twice—in 2013 and 2017.

The rules ...

The Muskegon Museum of Art describes the exhibition Excellence in Fibers in this way.

“Each year, hundreds of artists from around the world submit art for consideration by a team of expert jurors representing artists, curators, and designers. The final selection of artworks represents striking examples of a host of textile and fiber based pieces including sculpture, tapestry, jewelry, costume and clothing, quilting, weaving, basketry, installation, and more. These artworks are featured in a special edition of the internationally distributed magazine Fiber Art Now as a way of showcasing the current state of the fiber arts movement”.

Five years ago ...

In my previous Cloth in Common blog post about the prompt International, I mentioned that I learned of our prompt while traveling from New Zealand back to Anchorage, Alaska. (If you are wondering what the heck is Cloth in Common, start here.)

At the time I was sitting in the first row of First Class on Alaska Airlines. (Being a frequent flyer has its perks. ) I was on the second to last leg of my journey home, a flight from San Fransisco to Seattle, and I was staring at this “wall” in a classic long journey travel stupor.

Here was ...

Years ago, I would read my quilting magazines late at night, and I would see the ads for the Hudson River Valley Art Workshops, and wish I was there.

At the time, we lived in rural Alaska with three little boys and the idea of traveling to upstate New York to study quilt making was really just a late night wish before a  slumber frequently broken by toddler demands.

Time passed.

I began to teach—just a gig here and there. The boys grew.

And grew.

And then one day there was an email from Kim Polla inviting me to ...