When you've walked through a quilt show and admired the work of others, maybe you've had a variety of feelings, as I have. You're in awe. Thoroughly gobsmacked. You're inspired and can't wait to get back to your machine. You're discouraged (because your own skills don't come close). I had an interesting conversation with another [...]
A friend and I were sewing together the other day, and we both noticed a few things that we do differently from each other. My pal commented on the speediness of my method for cutting units from strip sets, so I wanted to share it with you. When you make a strip set, above, you can [...]
Happy Thanksgiving from Handi Quilter and HQ Stitch! There's so much to be thankful for, isn't there? Family and friends are foremost, but since creativity, sewing and quilting are such a big part of my life, I always include them in my Thanksgiving celebration. A few of my Thanksgiving highlights: Color: I'm grateful for color! [...]
Every so often I run into a piecing task with tricky intersections. They're the places that cause problems if they're not sewn accurately. My quilt of spools, thimbles and buttons for Quiltmaker magazine is a good example. The piecing is not complex, but the intersections where the "thread" meets the wood in the spools is tricky. [...]
Every year I wait anxiously to hear who won the big awards at International Quilt Festival in Houston. Last night, the Handi Quilter Best of Show Award went to Sherry Reynolds of Laramie, Wyoming for Eternal Beauty. Eternal Beauty by Sherry Reynolds of Laramie, Wyoming won the Handi Quilter Best of Show Award in [...]
Several guilds here in Nebraska have been anticipating a visit from Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville fame for about 3-1/2 years. That's when they booked her recent visit to our state. It's a long time to look forward to something! The thing that always hits me is how much better the quilts look in person than [...]
I started thinking about the idea of belonging last week during a meeting of my local quilt guild. By "belonging" I mean more than just being a paid-up member of a quilt group. I've lived in five different places over the course of my adult life. Each of those places reflected a different season of [...]
I love a day spent in class with a great quilting teacher and my sewing machine. What could be more fun? Unless you're having sewing machine problems. Then it can be pretty frustrating for you and for the teacher, who often has to help you trouble-shoot. I've been a student many times over the past [...]
We've been talking about the need to adjust the seam allowance when your patchwork isn't coming out accurately. If you own an HQ Stitch 710, we covered this in an earlier post. But if you own a different machine, there are two ways to adjust a seam allowance. Many times, my students aren't aware that [...]
A while back, my friend LeeAnn Meduna gave a guild program on her machine quilting journey. She started out quilting on a domestic sewing machine, and later she got a longarm. Her quilts were beautiful and inspiring, but one thing she said really stood out for me. LeeAnn brought along her sketchbook, in which she [...]
