What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

Do you know how there can be a project with one little glitch that ends up defining the whole process even though the project was otherwise super successful and fun?  Well, this quilt had one pesky fabric that would not "accept" anything in my stash as a fair patch.  

You see, it's actually a really fun quilt.  I date it to the 1940s or so.  I'm super fond of the color combination, especially the use of the solid orange.  I'm generally not a fan of orange, but in this case, I absolutely love the bright sparkle it ...

Build your quilting skills with the Vintage Rose BOM quilt this summer! Roses are red, but sewing fun has many more colors!

Vintage Rose Block of the Month

Let me introduce you to the Vintage Rose Block of the Month program that I designed for the Vintage Rose collection by Timeless Treasures! It measures 87” x 87”, and every block finishes at 12″.

Are you a beginner quilter? I’ve got your back! These blocks use regular piecing techniques – only one block requires the simplest paper piecing on the corners. You already have at home all you need to make ...

Download these two Free Sewing Theme Quilt Patterns now and make them for your home or sewing friends. You will love them!

Atelier Quilt #1

Happy New Year! I was off the grid for a few weeks visiting family in Brazil. I am back with two fun quilt patterns I designed for the Atelier collection by Elizabeth Medley for Blank Quilting. The fabrics are shipping to stores in February – you have enough time to download the patterns, find out where you can get the fabrics, and schedule a fun weekend of sewing alone or with your besties.

The Atelier collection ...

Just a little while ago, I wrote about how exciting it is to find an exactly matching fabric when patching vintage and antique quilts.  I told the stories of 6 times that has happened for me in nearly 40 years of repairing quilts.  

And lo and behold, number 7 just happened!  

The quilt in question is a 1930s Dresden Plate with what today is known as an ice cream cone border.  

Not only is the fabric exact, but it is a piece taken out of an old quilt and very nearly the same shape as well.  

And there is also ...

Sometimes fabrics that blend perfectly into the existing set of fabrics seem to fall into my lap, but sometimes a lengthy search ends up with settling for the better of several options.  

My restoration of this Lone Star quilt (1930s) serves as an example of the fabric search stage of quilt restoration.  I ...

A customer sent me two Double Wedding Ring quilts made by her grandmother.  She asked if I could take pieces off of the more “loved up” quilt (great words!) and use them to restore the less damaged one.  The quilts were both totally scrappy.  Some fabrics appeared in both quilts, but not all.  This is the first time I’ve had the opportunity to try that scenario! 

The owner told me:
My grandmother... used my mom's little dresses and probably her sisters' dresses also. My grandmother had 5 girls.

It's no surprise to anyone that knows me that I'm working on multiple quilts. I get bored VERY easily. I love to spend a little time on each quilt every day.

The family story of these three quilts is at Three Quilts, Three Generations - The Story.  Here, I will descirbe the repairs that I made to them.

The two crazy quilts were made primarily of wool and flannel fabrics.  One of the crazy quilts has an embroidered date and name, as well as more and more varied embroidered details.  The crazy quilts have some fabrics in common, so it's likely that they were both made around the same time.  The log cabin is cotton and significantly older. 

The repair techniques chosen for each quilt were chosen according to the kinds ...

https://www.vecteezy.com/free-vector/tap-dance" Tap Dance Vectors by Vecteezy

Straw needles?

Insect pins?

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

I'm offering a virtual workshop this fall that covers quilt restoration, conservation, and preservation. 

There will be lectures, triage sessions for participants' quilts, how-to videos, samples of repair supplies, etc., etc.

You can attend the whole workshop - five Saturdays October 16 - November 13 - 3 hours per day.

Or you can attend selected lectures alá ...

Might I suggest a new quilt adventure for your fall?  I am teaching an in-depth workshop focusing on repairing and caring for quilts.  Here's the scoop:

The workshop covers:
• restoration
• conservation
• preservation
• identification and dating
------
• philosophies
• supplies
• techniques

We will start with the basic information in my book, Preserving Our Quilt Legacy, and explore the topics in more detail and with hands-on experience:
• lectures
• discussions
• "triage" sessions for students' quilts
• a library of how-to videos teaching stitches and repair processes
• specialty sessions (including how to run a quilt repair business and yoga for tired hands and shoulders)

Sewists, appraisers ...

The color play on this quilt is spectacular!  

This turned patching some of the diamonds into one of those good news / bad news situations.  Good news: the quilt is gorgeous.  Bad news: it really, really needs the perfect patching fabrics so as to not detract from the wonderful color play.

There were just a few diamonds damaged.  So it could have been a relatively quick job, but it wasn't....

I had no problem with the pale yellow, the two pale pinks, or an aged white for the background.  Here's why.

A few years ago, a friend wrote that ...

Choose one of these red wagon quilt patterns or make them both! Bring back childhood memories of riding fun, and make one for each child!

This is Quilt 1 which I created for the My Red Wagon collection by Debbie Busby for Henry Glass. I am smitten by the textures and colors of these fabrics and so happy I was able to work with them! The prints spell ‘cozy’ with plaids and paisleys and are versatile as well because they include whimsical motifs for the entire year. Debbie was inspired!

Debbie worked with a primitive palette, imbuing each fabric with ...