What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

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 ...

Most of the repair requests I’ve received recently have been referred to my list of quilters who are willing to do repairs. But, when I got this request, I decided to do it as it was a different kind of repair than the usual with some unique challenges. First, the lace insertion was almost destroyed from heavy use and washing. The fabric had shrunk and crinkled without any quilting. There was very little batting left inside. The quilt had a few lines of stitching through all the layers where there were previous attempts to fix popped seams.

The lace ...

My January blog post on developing video skills for workshop teaching and YouTube outreach is in need of updating already! 

1.
I splurged (lucked into a sale!) on a great ring-light designed specifically for filming top-down demos.  I'm glad I waited until I'd done some filming without much investment past my DIY equipment.  That way, I knew what my situation and video goals needed. 

The light is super well engineered, and does away with duct tape set-up and take-down, and the difficulties of reaching around a precariously balanced camera tripod to sew.  It’s more for ease of ...

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.

Next week, I had a Zoom class scheduled for my Well Loved Quilt Repair. Unfortunately, things going on here have meant that I needed to postpone it to the following week. Not all the participants can do a class on April 19, so I now have two classes for individual sign up, and room in both for more participants. If you’ve thought about taking the class, you can now join the class on April 19 at 1 pm Eastern time, or May 10 at 1 pm Eastern Time.

Well Loved Quilt Repair pulls together my tips and tricks, and ...

Here is why people treasure quilts.  This quilt holds so many loving memories, symbolizes such a great story, and inspired this beautiful essay.  (Notes and photos on the repair process follow the story.)

My paternal grandmother made this quilt in the mid-1990s.  It was born from love that went back one long lifetime, and love that she wanted to carry forward several more lifetimes.

Grandma was a proud, tough “Okie.”  Born in 1919, she came of age in the worst hard times:  on a homestead farm between Hough and Guymon, Oklahoma, during the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression.  She ...

This year marks the 40th anniversary of our guild, so every month the social committee is doing something fun at our meetings. This past week, we were treated to cupcakes, well, fabric ones. These were such a cute idea, a rolled up fat quarter ‘served’ in a cupcake liner with a little triangle of yellow paper to simulate a candle burning. We sang Happy Birthday to us and wore party hats. It was such a fun way to start a meeting.

Back home, I began to pull and consider quilts to enter in the show this year. Registration is open ...

Well, I’ve been at it again. Between the Autumn Jubilee quilt along, sew along and stitch along, I have had three more repairs in the works. I’ve had to turn down two more as being just too much for me right now, and I got yet another inquiry this week. The last one was finished this past week, and was a bit more extensive than originally thought. The hole in the quilt you can see to the right of the green disintegrating patch has already had its backing appliqued on the back side before I loaded the quilt ...

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 ...

My new program Well Loved Quilt Repair is ready for presentation! The program is available for both Zoom and In Person presentations. I have pulled together my tips and tricks, and organized the program according to the types of repairs needed. The program is estimated to run just over an hour, with extra time for questions. I’ll show you how to repair anything from small tears and clean cuts…

to dog chewed areas…

and up to severe damage like this one.

This program adds to my offerings of programs now including Scrap Dancing for in-person and Zoom presentation, and ...

A customer sent me a quilt for repair, and included photos of her collection of family quilts.  She gave me permission to share them with you here.  What a treat to have this many quilts passed down for so many generations!  And only one, the Grandmother's Flower Garden, was in need of repair.

The owner says:  

I have a quilt from every generation down through ones that my mother made for me and for her 9 grandchildren. My family tree goes back to the Mayflower as a direct descendant of John Alden and Priscilla Mullin; it also includes James ...

1.  The Current Quilt Repair Job
What better way to spend some summer days than mending a mostly wool and flannel crazy quilt?  Well...yeah...I know...  I took this in-progress photo just for fun, and have decided I really like the photo as its own little piece of abstract composition.   

The dark fabrics are wool, the check is cotton flannel, and the red and white leaves are a woven upholstery-weight fabric.  It had pulled out from under the binding and frayed.  I took the photo when I was in the midst of inserting a nicely matching piece of wool ...