Clever little ideas for quilting faster and more easily.
I love red and I love hearts too, which is one reason why I like making quilts for Valentine’s day. Red is a hot color, the color of blood, of sunsets, and of Mars, the ancient Roman god of War. In the west, red is the color of excitement, danger, and passion. In China and…
Have you ever made a quilt that just wouldn’t cooperate with you? This quilt fought me every step of the way. I’m relieved that it’s finally finished. First problem: I’m trying to use up the stuff I already have in my sewing room instead of buying new stuff (just got the painful news about how…
This is an early rag quilt I made last year that seemed a little small at its original size of about 43 x 57. Yesterday I added the borders and gave the outer edge a deeper fringe. Then I took the quilt to my daughter’s high school to donate to a raffle for their annual…
Basting is an essential part of making a quilt, but I don’t know many quilters who enjoy it. Basting can be tedious, time-consuming, and difficult to get just right. If it goes wrong, you can end up with the heartbreak of wrinkles on your quilt. But it’s a step you can’t skip, and some ways…
Giving someone a gift card doesn’t have to have that impersonal, last-minute feeling. Make your gift something unique and personal by sewing a cute little fabric envelope to hold a gift card (or a crisp twenty-dollar bill).It’s easy to customize your gift by choosing fabrics that fit the person and the occasion. It takes less…
For the last month I’ve been sick with a nasty cold, followed by an equally nasty sinus infection and hacking cough. The only thing I felt well enough to do was make fabric gift bags. (Did I mention that I’m a bit obsessed with making gift bags?) There are several things about these bags that…
The good thing is, I got this braid quilt mostly finished yesterday. The bad thing is, I produced a new pile of scraps. Teeny little triangular scraps. Little scraps like these always make me feel guilty. I can’t figure out what to do with them, but it seems wasteful to get rid of them. I…
When you make a quilted wall hanging, one thing you need to decide on is how you will hang the quilt on the wall. There are several different ways to do this: 1. Use Quilt Hanging Clips These clips fasten onto the edge of the quilt and get mounted on a nail in the wall….
Around our house, we believe that you can never have too many Halloween decorations. I didn’t actually finish this little ghost quilt until the day after Halloween, but I’m posting the instructions so that if you want to make one, you’ll have a real head start on next year! If you concentrate, you can get…
I love making quilts for Halloween. I especially love pumpkin quilts, which can have either a Halloween theme or a Harvest theme (or both.) Here’s a small gallery of favorite pumpkin quilts I’ve made or photographed over the years. The top photo is a quilt of my own design, using some fat quarters of fabric…
How can you be sure the quilt you’re planning will look good before you go to all the work of cutting out the fabric and sewing the quilt together? A quilt design wall gives you a way to test your fabric choices and see exactly how your quilt will look before you assemble it. You…
How big should you make a table topper quilt? The table below gives dimensions for quilts to top several different size tables. Table runner quilts are a great way to try out techniques you’re not quite confident enough to use yet on a bed quilt. Table Type Table Size Table Topper Size Card Table 36″ x…