My entry into quilting started with the ugliest calico fabrics you’ve ever seen and a cardboard – yes cardboard – cutting mat. After cutting all the ugly fabric and having enough shredded cardboard to start fires for years, I put it all away because I didn’t know what to do next.
A few years later, a woman was working on an appliqué block while meeting with a larger group of friends. I asked herwhat it was about, and she proclaimed herself a quilter.
“Hey,” I said. “I have a bunch of ugly squares in Ziploc bags from a few years ago that I don’t know what to do with.”
Like many quilters do, she offered to come to my house that weekend to show me the next step. She arrived, looked at my bags of ugly fabric, and shook her head. I’m pretty sure she was thinking about faking an illness so she could run and never come back.
But she stayed. Over the next month, we tried to find a way to arrange the squares of ugly fabrics into a pattern that wouldn’t make you throw up. She taught me about the quarter-inch seam, pressing to one side, putting blocks and rows together, basting, quilting, and binding.
Then she helped me start a new project the “right way.” That second quilt was so much better in so many ways. From design and color choice to piecing and quilting technique, it was wonderful. And I was hooked.
That was in 2000. Over the past two decades, I’ve mostly worked through books and patterns teaching myself how to quilt. If I may say so, I’m pretty darn good at it too! Now I write my own patterns, tutorials, and cheat sheets.
Quilting plays a huge role in my life. Through good times and bad, baby quilts and memorial quilts, in peace and in stress, quilting is what centers me and feeds my soul. I think if you give it a try, it will feed your soul too.
So my promise to you is to inspire you to create beautiful quilts in an uplifting community. If there’s anything you want to learn about quilting that I haven’t posted yet, send me a message and make a request. I’ll get to work on it and let you know when you can expect to see it published.