Ten years of ‘Twelve Quilts of Christmas’

 Mary Elizabeth Kinch is currently posting her tenth annual series of blog posts ‘Twelve Quilts of Christmas’, this year featuring Welsh Quilts. 

‘… If I had a favourite genre of quilts, they are it.  Welsh Quilts are for me the epitome of what I call “Quilting with Abandon”.  Welsh quilters boldly manifested their distinctive designs with fearless exuberance, not feeling bound to fastidious, precisely drafted, and exacting executions in their work.  Instead they embraced their own individuality and let it shine in quilts that reflected their character through their stitches.’

You will easily find the previous nine years of ‘Twelve Quilts of Christmas’ in the Archives links on the blog. 

The series is also available on Instagram @maryelizabethkinch and her Facebook page Mary Elizabeth Kinch Quilts (although the current series does not appear to be on the Facebook page).

A treat to pore over during the holiday break.

Reading, viewing, listening ...

https://youtu.be/jmbDaCGu8Hw

Kaffe Fassett discussing his quilts at 2021 Festival of Quilts, with Natasha McCarty.

‘Studio Spades’ is a series of posts about textile artists’ work spaces produced once or twice a week by Fibre Arts Australia. You can subscribe to receive an email alert each time a post is made. Alternatively you can simply read the posts at the website. There is currently an archive of fourteen entries:

https://www.fibrearts.net.au/studiospaces

It’s an interesting insight into how and where the artists work, and what they regard as essential to their practice.

Greg Lauren and the Gee’s Bend Quilters crafted wearable Americana

In our era of hyperfast consumption, Greg Lauren has a zeal for patience. His slow-made approach to reconstruction finds new life for otherwise unwanted scraps and textiles, a time-consuming process that undermines the typical more-more-more industry mentality.  

So, Lauren's partnership with the Gee's Bend Quilters feels like the designer both paying his dues and paying forward the renown garnered by his own designs.  Jake Silberi, Highsnobiety, 16 October 2021

 

How Singer Won the Sewing Machine War

The Singer Sewing Machine changed the way America manufactured textiles, but the invention itself was less important than the company’s innovative business … Alex Palmer, Smithsonian Magazine, 14 July 2015

 

Artist Bisa Butler on creating new narratives through portrait quilts

Artist Bisa Butler has been called a modern-day Griot – but instead of using words to tell stories, she uses stitches and cloth. Her quilts have graced the covers of magazines and she created the striking illustration for the soon-to-be-released book "Unbound," the memoir of activist and Me Too movement founder Tarana Burke. Nancy Chen reports.

CBS This Morning, 4 September 2021

Bisa Butler: Portraits
Erica Warren (Editor), et al, Yale University Press, 2020

Bisa Butler (b. 1973) is an American artist who creates arresting and psychologically nuanced portraits composed entirely of vibrantly colored and patterned fabrics that she cuts, layers, and stitches together. Often depicting scenes from African American life and history, Butler invites viewers to invest in the lives of the people she represents while simultaneously expanding art-historical narratives about American quiltmaking. Situating her interdisciplinary work within the broader history of textiles, photography, and contemporary art, contributions by a group of scholars—and entries by the artist herself—illuminate Butler’s approach to color, use of African-print fabrics, and wide-ranging sources of inspiration. Offering an in-depth exploration of one of America's most innovative contemporary artists, this volume will serve as a primary resource that both introduces Butler’s work and establishes a scholarly foundation for future research. 

Virtual Sydney Quilt Show 2021

Welcome news from Quilt NSW today:

QuiltNSW is committed to providing members with opportunities to share their quilts and to celebrate creativity. With the welcome easing of health restrictions in NSW, the Exhibition Subcommittee is proceeding with the plan to present the Sydney Quilt Show 2021 online. This is a virtual event where ALL of the quilts are judged in the cloth, photographed and then displayed online.

258 entrants are participating in the online show. The Exhibition Subcommittee is very excited by this response and buoyed by the encouragement and enthusiasm of the entrants' comments in their participation forms. Thank you!

In coming days, we will be sharing some behind-the-scenes insights into Operation Blackbird aka Sydney Quilt Show 2021 Online. Stay tuned to the Quilt NSW Facebook page, or the Template Free blog.

Which way is up?

We pin baste a lot of quilts during our monthly community sewing days, and we rarely remember which way the batting is designed to go. Especially if you use a variety of brands and types of batting, a well illustrated reminder such as this blog post by Suzy Quilts will be useful:

Batting seems pretty straightforward ... so what else could there possibly be to talk about? We need to talk about the sides of batting, and how to make sure we stay on its good side ...  Is there a right side to quilt batting? Suzy Quilts, 20 December 2018

• The link has been added to our page of 'Quick links to techniques and resources', along with the link to Spring Leaf Studios' series of posts on 'quilt-as-you' go techniques.

Blog series on Quilt as You Go techniques

Quilting these 16" blocks was much easier
to tackle  one by one than the much 
larger quilt they became part of.

These lovely quiet, often slow, free days between Christmas and New Year are a good time to think about what we might do next as quilters - more of what we already know and love, or maybe take a leap into something new.

Before you start your next quilt (or at least before you join all those blocks together), would you find it easier to quilt it yourself if you mastered a 'quilt as you go' technique or two?

Anne Deister, who writes the Spingleaf Studios blog has written a generous series of posts on various quilt-as-you-go techniques that might get you started. The series covers 5 ways of piecing and quilting block-by-block, and a summary of the five.

She says:

... These posts are not QAYG tutorials but they do include links to the tutorials I used. 

I know I certainly learned a lot from my explorations and will definitely be using QAYG for future projects. 

My hope is that you will be inspired to give QAYG a try.

2018 Tokyo Quilt Festival

The 2018 Tokyo Quilt Festival is currently on, finishing tomorrow. Patricia Belyea has published many  excellent photos on her blog Okan Arts. The spectacular Grand Prix winning quilt, made by Masako Sanada is at the end of this lengthy post, as are links to two further posts featuring Patricia's photos from the special exhibits and some very detailed close-ups.

You can follow Okan Arts on Instagram, and on Facebook.

Krista Hennebury ( has also posted some excellent photos from the show on Instagram.

Tutorial for a knit wholecloth quilt

If most of your sewing is quilting, how long is it since you sewed with knit fabrics? You might have noticed that a growing number of quilting fabric designs are being released in a variety of base cloths in addition to quilting cottons, including knits. A quilt in a knit fabric could be particularly soft cuddly. Here is a recent tutorial on making a knit wholecloth quilt:

Sew Your Own Whole Cloth Knit Quilt…Yes, I Said Knit

Mister Domestic, Stitching Sewcial, 26 February 2017

... after a few years of persistence and humility, I can confidently say that I have conquered knit… enough so that I am going to share with you how to make your own whole cloth knit quilt. And I promise that it won’t fall apart ...

Odd quirks ...

For anyone who has ever sewn a block, or part if one backwards, upside down or even back-to-front, Barbara Brackman's recent post will assure you that you are not alone (you probably already know that). Not all the quirks in the quilts in her post are mistakes, some are just design elements ...

• Quilters who don't think like we do, Material Culture: quilts and fabric past and present, 10 March 2017

Pam Holland's photos from Houston

Well known Australian teacher and quilter, Pam Holland  has posted a series of excellent, detailed photos from the 2016 International Quilt Festival in Houston earlier this month, on her blog I am Pam:

• And the winners are, Houston Quilt Festival
• More images from the Houston Quilt Show

You will see from the comments that there has been some controversy about the ownership of the image used as the basis for the quilt 'Unknown Man'.

Another great idea

Do you ever struggle with shifting rulers as you try to align your quilts edges on those rare occasions when they don't end up just perfectly square?

 Here is an ingenious technique, using an inexpensive non-quilting tool - a 'why didn't I think if that?' idea, from Sew Bitter Sweet Designs:

• Laser Level Trimming Tutorial

Off to Bunnings' quilting department ...

Vermont Festival of Quilts - images

If you could do with a good dose of beautiful quilts to study this week, Fun with Barb has posted a number of images from the recent Vermont Quilt Festival 2016, including a special exhibit of Gwen Marston's quilts.

Fussy cutting - a tutorial, or just a beautiful post for looking at the pictures, and an introduction to 'Passacaglia'

Blog posts can be prepared ahead of time and scheduled to post automatically - but you have to check the 'schedule' box in the blog editing program. Sometimes that doesn't happen, and posts (like emails) languish in the 'drafts; folder, like this one from 2014!

We have some virtuoso paper piecers at Fairholme, with expert fussy cutting skills ... but some of us have not ventured there yet.  This post from UK quilter Flossie Teacakes (who obviously doesn't take herself too seriously), is both an excellent tutorial and a beautiful little feast for the eye.

Other tutorials that might catch your eye, too are linked from her side-bar (left side). If you are captured by the Passacaglia 'cogs' in her banner, take a look at the first and last images (more about that second image here) in this post too (which is not about epp) ... there is much to see in this blog
'from between the stitches'.

Passacaglia is one of the projects in Millefiori Quilts, published by Quilt Mania.

And if you want to see more about a Passacaglia quilt in progress, Lilabelle Lane's dedicated page is a good place to start ... or just put 'Passacaglia' into Google, and follow the links under 'images'.
See you on the other side.

Some quilty reading and viewing for the long weekend

The backstory of a popular book in our library, Sunday Morning Quilts, by Cheryl Arkison:

• How Sunday Morning Quilts Changed My Life

Cheryl Arkison will be visiting Australia as the guest tutor for the inaugural Creative Retreats, to be held in NSW and Victoria in June-July .

The Invisible Quilter
The Off-Kilter Quilt, 15 March 2016

The other day I went to a friend’s birthday lunch at a local cafe. I was seated among a group of women I didn’t know, and when I mentioned that I made quilts I got the response I almost always get when amongst the muggles (i.e. nonquilters): admiration (“that’s so cool!”) underscored by confusion. People still make quilts? ...

Why Does My Longarmer Charge ‘So Much’?

AndiCrafts, 21 March 2016

... It was obvious she had used all of her talent, training and PASSION for quilting to turn this top into a show stopper. And do you know how much she earned for all of this hard work? Around $13 per hour ...

Paper pieced 'Unicorn' block
Robynieland publishes interesting paper piecing patterns, including a very attractive unicorn block:

... R. T. Rognstad is an American artist and sewist creating in New Zealand. Her work involves a variety of animals as curious and alluring characters ...

And in case you are travelling to the US sometime, a fabric store you might want to check out ...

• Obies, the fabric hoarding store of your dreams

The Rajah Quilt revisited: video free online this week only

This episode of the (US) Quilt Show, featuring Australian quilter and designer Lesse Siegele, designer of their Block of the Month for 2016, will be freely available online for just this week.

The BOM is Lesse's Rajah Quilt Revisited. More information about the block of the month, with links to kits or to the pattern only is in this blog post from The Quilt Show.

• National Gallery of Australia page on the Rajah Quilt 1841
• Quilt patterns by Lesse Siegele are available for purchase here.

A goldmine of Christmas quilt links, and more

Quilt Inspiration, a blog by two quilting sisters, has been very organised and generous, publishing a series of  four posts with links to many free patterns for Christmas themed quilts, way back in July.

The first post is here (a forest of free patterns and tutorials for Christmas Tree quilts and wall hangings) and you will easily find the next three by scrolling down the right hand column to the archives list for July 2015.

There is much else to enjoy on this blog - you might want to bookmark it or add it to your reader in time for some holiday reading.

William Morris cake!

Quilters and cakes are often not strangers. Just Google 'quilt cake' and you will find hundreds of ingenious cakes decorated with quilting themes.

Not directly related to quilting, but many quilters will appreciate My Big Fat Cake Project 2014, taking it to another level, with a design based on William Morris's 'Strawberry Thief'.

The cake is an annual event, one of the ways in which the William Morris Society of Canada celebrates the designer's birthday - check the link in the post for earlier William Morris cake designs.

Investigation of popular pen used as quilt-marking tool

A useful post about the way the inks in Frixion pens work, with input from the manufacturer:

Frixion pens - all you need to knowJenny K Lyon, Quilt Skipper, 13th August 2015

Cotton + Steel: new blog + 5 free patterns

Cotton + Steel, a company of five young designers burst onto the fabric scene a year ago, with a popular collection of individually designed but coordinating quilting cotton, manufactured and marketed by RJR Fabrics.

They have since branched out into a variety of fabrics including some for garment making, and home decor.  Their (northern) Spring 2015 collection is just arriving in local quilting shops, and quilters are enjoying them as much as the first collection.

To celebrate their second year, Cotton + Steel have launched a blog, with a free quilt pattern to download from each of the designers - the accompanying quilts are made up in the new fabric collections.

'... this parallel universe of quilting ...'

Enjoy the transcript of this speech, delivered at a Canadian conference. It is quite long (and well worth the time), but do not settle back with a cup of tea or coffee (or any drink for that matter) - your keyboard will be at risk. Thank you to Kavy, The Sewing Lawyer, for bringing it to us:

A speech on quilting, by Allan Fradsham, a criminal court judge in Calgary, Alberta, 2010
... I was completely oblivious to the fact that what she was really announcing was that she was taking up membership in a tightly knit (if you'll pardon the expression) group of individuals whose loyalty to one another makes motorcycle gang members seem uncommitted, and whose passion for quilting activities makes members of cults look positively disinterested. As is the case with many spouses, I was completely unaware that there existed this parallel universe called quilting ...

A tip from Miriam ...

We love Sew Miriam's blog posts - she is, after all, 'our' Miriam.

The latest one is a simple, but very effective tip on binding - and no, we haven't all heard it before. We'll be trying it just as soon as the next quilt is ready for binding.