Quilting

istockphoto I’m off again this weekend, on every quilter’s favorite sojourn.  The Quilting Retreat!  My friends and I have been planning this since last summer, and the excitement is high!  Eight of us leave today for a serene monastery, tucked away in the East Bay hills.  The monks will be doing all the cooking and…

All quiltmakers have a fantasy that one of the quilts that they create and give away may someday become a most cherished, best beloved object.  That fantasy came true for me.  In the late 1970’s when I was just starting to make quilts, I chose a simple baby quilt to practice on.  No baby in…

Here you see one of my favorite quilting books, 40 Fabulous Quick Cut Quilts by Evelyn Sloppy (gotta love her name).  I have used this book for a couple of quilt projects and have marked pages with little Post-It flags for about a dozen more projects I would love to do in the future.  This…

Since I didn’t get much of a chance to sew this past weekend, my posts this week will mostly be about future projects I have been contemplating, or completed projects I would like to share with you. The quilt pictured above is one that I gave to my sister a few years ago.  The pattern…

This quilt was made in a fantastic class taught by Verna Mosquera of The Vintage Spool pattern company.  Verna is mainly known for her incredible applique skills, so this particular class offering was somewhat unusual, being solely a pieced project.  Having long been a fan of her designs, I jumped at the chance to take…

Last night after work I drove 20 miles in the pouring rain to an open sewing class at my favorite quiltshop Prairie Queens.   Why on earth would I do that, instead of going home to a nice dinner, a fire in the fireplace, and a lovely glass of chardonnay?  Simply because the shop is welcoming,…

Be afraid.  Be VERY afraid.  I am about to reveal more about myself than you may want to know.  The photo above depicts my "stash closet" in all its untidy disorganization.  When we moved into this house, I had the double closet in my sewing room customized to be mostly shelving for my fabric bundles,…

I made a baby quilt this weekend.  Want to know why? When I was a little girl, people would ask me, as adults are apt to do with children, "So, Nicki, what do you want to be when you grow up?"  I always gave the same answer, to everyone’s amusement.  Forget about ballerinas, nurses, teachers,…

I adore a scrappy quilt.  No sense in using four or five fabrics when forty or fifty are so much more interesting.  Oh, I have made my share of planned quilts that involve specific amounts of yardage using just a few different fabrics, but those quilts tend to bore me.   In my mind, the main…

Some quilts are just made to be owned by certain people.  This quilt is one I made five or six years ago.  I used silky beautiful Robin Pandolph Moda fabrics and recall how I loved the feel of the fabric and how much fun it was to combine different combinations of the fat quarters.  It…