I buy most of them second-hand. They are a great source of inspiration and I return to them again and again. Many of their titles are similar, and so I struggle to remember which ones I own.
What’s interesting is that many weren’t written for quilters. Each book’s aim is slightly different, but only a few feature patterns for making the quilts inside.
Scrappy Tips will arrive once or twice a month and is short and sweet because we’re all busy. When there’s an event upcoming, I include that, too.
Quilt on!
While I was traveling last month, a book arrived in the mail. According to the invoice, I ordered it while I was away from home.
It’s a great book full of intriguing quilts.
I keep paging through as if that will remind me but so far, no luck.
Then there are these strips, about 500 of them, cut 1-1/4″ x 4-1/2″.
They’re all stacked neatly together as if for a project. But I have no recollection of what it was. A few of the strips are narrower and a few are shorter. Was I just careless or was there a reason?
And then I have these brand-new rolls of 2-1/2″ strips from Robert Kaufman. Why did I buy them?
One is greys and grids by Carolyn Friedlander and the other is beautiful neutral solids.
They really are lovely but I have no hint of what I planned to make with them.
Quilt on,
On Thursday, Feb 24 (just five days away) I’m giving Windy Wonders on Zoom to everyone who’d like to get a ticket and come.
And I know firsthand that their programming is limited by their budgets. So I’ve come up with a plan to make it easier for smaller groups to book a program with Stash Bandit (that’s me!).
The live presentation will be virtual through Zoom.
Available to groups with 50 or fewer members on their paid roster (honor system).*
The fee for a one-hour trunk show of your choice is $10/person on the roster. For example, if you have 35 members, $10 x 35 = $350. (The standard fee is $525.)
You will be guaranteed a seat for every person who registers for the meeting on Zoom.
I will make the remaining seats available to others.
The deadline for your members to register for the meeting is 10 days before. This gives me time to fill the rest of the seats.
For very small groups, I may request a date other than your normal meeting time.
I will limit the number of these programs I do each year.
About a week ago, on Jan. 28, Mary Fons posted a YouTube video called “Stop Cutting Up Quilts to Make Clothes.” A graphic image (below) was used on Instagram to publicize the video.
And the graphic did its job. Not only did it entice me to watch the video, almost 15 thousand other people watched it too. Many of those watched after this became news in the quilt world, but still. For the sake of comparison, Mary has about 8000 subscribers and her videos mostly garner a few hundred views each on YouTube/Twitch.
Mary Fons is the 40-something daughter of quilting superstar Marianne Fons. Marianne and her business partner Liz Porter created an empire of sorts selling magazines, books, videos and tools for quilters, among other things. They became widely known before selling the business.
Mary Fons has long been inside the quilt industry. She hosted Fons & Porter’s Love of Quilting television program on PBS, she founded a magazine for beginning modern-leaning sewists called Quilty, she wrote a long-running column for Quilts Inc. (the organization that gives us International Quilt Festival), she more recently served as editor-in-chief of Quiltfolk magazine and she’s an active live-streamer on various quilt topics via YouTube and Twitch. (There’s much, much more to her quilting resume.)
And that’s an understatement. There were quilters at every turn who did not like her and they weren’t shy about saying so. They made awful comments and personal attacks. Mary called them out and forged ahead.
There was a time when I wondered if it wasn’t convenient to ride (into the industry) on her mother’s coattails, but then I heard Mary speak at QuiltCon and she was eloquent. She is smart, she generally does her homework and she isn’t afraid to take a stand.
Part of her background is in theatre and so she is…theatrical. She’s very expressive and it seems like many of her detractors have taken issue with that. But it’s how she communicates—her way of being in the world.
Mary spoke passionately about famous designers like Emily Bode and regular quilters like you and me cutting up quilts to make garments. She strongly opposes the practice and she tells us why.
…wrong, privileged, dramatic, clickbait, condescending, gatekeeping girl boss and more. So much more. The general idea among these folks is “how dare you tell me how I can make art.”
Mary’s YouTube video: What started this storm
Lots of opinions via Reddit: Mostly negative comments
Passion for patchwork: make-do-and-mend hits the Paris catwalk: More about Emily Bode and her fashion designs made from old quilts
Bode’s homepage for lots more quilted clothing: See the weird and wonderful here
I can’t wait to hear what you think.
Quilt on,
Make a note to pick it up when you’re at the grocery store or grab it online!
As the world shut down in the spring of 2020, I thought about quilters staying at home and making quilts to calm their hearts and minds. I couldn’t get the idea of a house quilt out of my head.
Or maybe it’s that we’re sailing into Year Three and that’s disheartening. I’m having a hard time concentrating, organizing, motivating. I think I am not alone.
The start of a new year always feels like a good time to clean up the studio. Of course I do it periodically but I’m no clean freak and my husband would say that I’m a walking tornado. When I can’t see the top of my sewing table, I know it’s time.
I designed Father & Farmer with my dad in mind. He wore bib overalls and a blue chambray shirt and carried a red or navy bandana handkerchief nearly every day of his life. This quilt appeared in Fons & Porter’s Quick + Easy Quilts Feb/March 2021.
You can still order the issue and it’s even on sale! There are several other patterns inside that I’d love to make. A magazine continues to give you the most bang for your buck: anywhere from eight to 12 patterns for less than five dollars, in this case. What’s not to love?!
One of my favorites this year was a quilt that began with reject or leftover blocks from my friend Carol Baker. I loved the fabrics! I took a handful of blocks apart, reused some of the patches and added some stash fabrics of my own.
I gave it the name “scrappy with orange garnish” as strictly a working title when I submitted the quilt idea. Maybe nobody had a better idea because that one seemed to stick—something I learned as I opened the magazine. You can still get the pattern if you have scraps you’d like to use up. It would look great in just about any colors!
Scrappy with Orange Garnish Pattern from Quilting Daily (also on sale!)
In early spring I ran a series of Sunday afternoon sessions on a complimentary basis. I called the series Scrap Quilt Secrets. It was fun and interesting for me but I learned some lessons that were tough to swallow. I spent the rest of the year attempting to apply what I’d learned.
The StarQuar unit grew out of Scrap Quilt Secrets. I continue to play and I’m excited about this idea and its endless potential. One magazine quilt is already on tap for 2022—I’m working on it now.
The thrill of 2021 was my Big Cheese quilt on the cover of Quiltmania. I was just happy to have a design picked up, and it was such a lovely surprise to see it on the front. I picked up my phone one morning, opened Instagram and there it was.
This quilt came about because another idea had flopped. I was just playing around and it kind of happened by accident. And then I guess I didn’t realize it would appeal to anyone else because it sat around my studio for many months before I sent it to Quiltmania in a sort of “hail Mary” way.
Like many others, the pandemic has kept me from seeing the people I love most including my grandchildren, who live in Hong Kong. I made doll quilts for my twin granddaughters Lucy and Emma.
The two quilts are the same but have slightly different colors, and the fabrics all came from my stash.
When the magazine was finished shooting the quilts, I shipped them off to the girls. Funny thing, they liked the quilts but were especially enamored with the little pillows and pillowcases!
I’m running out of time and laptop battery but I also did monthly Facebook Lives for Annie’s/Quilter’s World, traveled to a handful of guilds, presented on Zoom nearly every week, launched open enrollment classes, tried to send Scrappy Tips by email regularly, worked to blog more often (still working!), grew my Insta a whole bunch and met a lot of wonderful people in virtual classes.
Still need to do lots more planning for 2022 but I will sign off for now with this: