Interested in hearing this post as audio?  You can do so here!

I love a good quilt kit. In this too-busy life, a well-designed kit can give you fast success with a minimum amount of fuss.

I realize some people think quilt kits are “cheating.” So unless your quilting experience is being governed by a state board with graded exams, I can’t see where this is a cheat! And again, why are we making arbitrary “rules” that make people feel excluded from our lovely, vast community?

YOU get to do your quilting practice YOUR way

In my opinion, anything that helps you have fun making your next project gets top marks.

Seven reasons why I love quilt kits:

1. It’s an all-in-one package: A quilt kit usually includes all the necessary materials needed to complete a project. This makes it easier for those new to quilting to get started in a snap.
2. They’re usually made with high-quality materials: A kit often includes high-quality fabric, which means your finished project will look great and last a long time. Thus, if we’re going to use our precious time, let’s make sure the quilt lasts.
3. You already like the finished quilt: If you worry about wasting time or money, a kit is a great way to guarantee you’ll like what you make. You’ve already seen the finished result and liked it enough to be interested in replicating it!
4. Kits help you with fabric choices: if you’re new to choosing your own fabrics, or nervous about getting it just right, or just can’t make one more decision right now, a kit solves that problem for you. So just buy one and get sewing!
5. Kits are time-saving: With a quilt kit, you don’t have to spend hours searching for the perfect fabrics. Everything you need is included, usually down to the binding.
6. Quilt kits are inspiring: Kits often come with patterns that can introduce you to new designers. So your next project can be inspired by this one!
7. Kits are convenient: You only need to go to one shop for everything. Also, if you buy it online, it will magically appear at your door!

Image above: Faster Fourteen quilt pattern by Hunter’s Design Studio, Kit featuring e bond Root fabric from Free Spirit at Crimson Tate (Spring 2023)

The post Seven Reasons Why I Love Quilt Kits appeared first on Hunter's Design Studio.

Note: I often write for my industry, and this is one of those such times.

Interested in hearing this post as audio?  You can do so here!

This question came up recently in a conversation with a colleague: does learning Adobe Illustrator make you a professional quilt pattern designer?*

The TL;DR answer from my chair is NOPE.

But let me dig into this a bit, because once we start digging under the hood of such deceptively simple questions, it becomes obvious that there are nuances to consider.

The Adobe Creative Suite is considered the industry standard for graphic design, and a written and illustrated quilt pattern is definitely a form of graphic design. It’s also widely acknowledged that Adobe products are powerful and thus complex, requiring a steep learning curve to gain some skill.

I lucked out on learning Illustrator. I had to do it as part of the Foundations requirements for my BA in Art, and despite a semester-long class and a fabulous professor, there were many weekends of steaming frustration until I got the hang of the little bit I know.

Emphasis on the little bit I know.

I bet I know barely a tablespoon of what Illustrator can do, but the part I need to know to design patterns, I know well, and well enough to help out my friends and colleagues at times. The rest happily remains a mystery to me.

When I first started designing quilt patterns, there were often conversations in the community about just drawing a shape in PowerPoint, exporting it to Word, patting your head, rubbing your belly, and turning around three times while hoping it would stay correctly scaled through exporting it to a PDF. And my contribution to those conversations was usually, “For the love of all things, just learn the industry standard tool because that’s gotta be easier than all these other contortions.”

Incidentally, I still advocate for learning Illustrator from the start rather than learning three other things on the way to it because burning the time to re-learn software is expensive, and you’ll never outgrow Illustrator.

But one of the things I’m aware of, after 30-plus years in this industry as both a consumer and a professional, is that for some tedious reason, people like to define irrelevant criteria by which they can justify their superiority and then use said criteria to create exclusion and bias. Using this situation as an example, it comes off like “I’m better than you because I use Illustrator and you don’t, and therefore you don’t belong.”

OUCH.

Thirty-five years ago, a different group of people argued that quilts were only “real” if they were hand-quilted. Or hand-pieced like grandma did it. To the people who still argue such points, I say to you: hand over your cell phone, your air-fryer, and the keys to your hybrid car.

Look, everything that still matters is going to evolve, so of course pattern writing is evolving, too. In my early quilting days, I remember buying patterns that were obviously library-produced photocopies with hand-drawn illustrations, and glossy photographs hand-glued to the pattern covers because that’s what was possible in 1989 when you were boot-strapping your biz.

Today’s evolution now includes several different software programs that can get you to a lovely pattern that downloads digitally on just about any device (including your phone!) or a gorgeous, commercially-produced, full-color booklet.

Skill-wise, if you hit a wall either in your capabilities or the limitations of your software, you’ll either level up your skills, your software, or your budget to pay people to make the tricky stuff for you. This is the way the human knowledge has always worked… “I don’t know something, I want/need to know it, so where can I find it, or who can I pay to deal with it?” I mean, it’s Google in a nutshell, without the creepy data mining practices.

So by all means, use EQ, Affinity, Inkscape, or Canva.

Or keep on patting your head while you wrangle with PowerPoint. If you hit a point one day where your ambitions or income are being held up by not learning Illustrator, I’m sure you’ll figure out what to do, or who to hire.

*BTW, the definition of professional is “one who follows an occupation as means of livelihood or for gain.”

To me, you are a professional pattern designer if your intent is to run a profitable business that designs and sells patterns.

The software you use to write them is irrelevant.

One of the assignments I conquered while learning Illustrator in college: Draw over a Michelangelo drawing. Took me allllllll weekend!

The post Does learning Adobe Illustrator make you a Professional Quilt Pattern Designer? appeared first on Hunter's Design Studio.

First up is the Hedgie Pincushion – this little softie is about 5” nose to tail.  Hedgie is an excellent repository for all your dead sewing machine needles (which I hope you’re changing often!) It would be a great gift for a sewing friend.

Next up is a brand new pattern, Chunky Wee Pincushions. The pattern includes six classic quilting blocks in three different sizes (4”, 3”, and 2”) to make pincushions that work on your sewing table. The smallest one is great in your hand sewing kit (it’s 2” x 2” x 1” tall!) They are all satisfyingly chunky! Best of all, the pattern is on sale through Sunday Dec 9 2018!

The last project I want to feature is a perennial standby, Chunky Wee Zippy Pouches. It goes together in just 8 seams! The photo is the small pencil pouch from the pattern, but there are two other sizes included, as well as instructions to make a pouch of any size of your choosing (yep, I have easy math instructions for that!) These make great gifts for teachers, artists, students, and just about anyone who likes to keep stuff all zipped up.

* The cute pindot fabrics in my pix are the Garden Pindots from Michael Miller Fabrics – they are adorable, and a great addition to your stash!

The post Last Minute Gifts appeared first on Hunter's Design Studio.

1. I can’t speak to what my friends and colleagues care about in their patterns writing endeavors, but I can tell you I have a mission statement for how I create mine. I don’t do this for fame and fortune (LOL!) I do it because I want people to have more fun making more stuff – I really consider pattern writing a SERVICE to both my industry and to our customers. MANY of my colleagues care just as much.

2. My reader asked “what the hell were the pattern testers doing?” My guess is they were trying their best. I have a core team* that reads and test-sews for me. Each of them have a specific area of skill that helps me – reading, drawings, flow, etc. Sadly though, ten people can look at a pattern and something still slips through. Whenever I’ve put a call out for new testers I never hear back from more than half the people who take the pattern draft. I will optimistically hope they had a “life happened” moment, and not presume they are just trying to get a free pattern out of me. And honestly, if they were, the joke’s on them as my first drafts can be pretty shaggy.

3A. My reader thought that testers were paid, which is seldom the case. I WISH I could pay my testers with cash; I send them patterns and occasionally other stuff, but it’s hardly equal to their work (I’m not given enough fabric to forward as compensation). Our industry is lucky to have a mostly kind fan base, and I’m beyond lucky that I have my team. They help because they want us/me to succeed. They think their effort is a worthy contribution for the betterment of the industry. That said, they are humans and therefore they goof up. As do I. I have a page where all errors are listed, and am sweatily relieved that most of my errors have been small, and not in the realm of the expensively large cut my reader was rightly upset about.

3B. Why can’t I pay them? Honestly, the profit margin at my end of a $12 pattern (that sells through a distributor to a shop) is in the neighborhood of $3.50. And sadly, it’s not enough for paying testers AND eating. Yes, I get all the profits from a PDF sold directly from my site, but it also takes about 100 hours to fully produce a pattern. And before you imagine my earnings are “bonus” in my family (like old-fashioned pin money) let me clarify for you that I have no husband, partner, other job, or trust fund. It’s just me.

3C. Why isn’t my income higher? The profits at the designer end just aren’t that high, so we rely on volume (and we have stores going out of business everywhere). While many of my customers respect what I do and happily pay for my design skills (and I adore you all for that), I’m sad to report that we still have a LOT of people who think that patterns should be free. These thieves copy our patterns far and wide to all their pals. A POX ON THEIR SEWING MACHINES.

4. My reader was upset that she didn’t get a reply when she wrote to a designer about an error. Again, all I can say is I write back as soon as I can, but within business hours – not at all hours of the night and weekends because really, this is quilting, not emergency medicine. I’m as responsive as I can be, and I care about fixing errors (see 1 above). And PLEASE check your junk/spam folder before presuming you didn’t get a response.

5A. My reader feels tempted to complain to her IG following to get the attention of the designer in question. To which I say, BE CAREFUL THERE. Yes, you get to say you’re not happy, but I think you should fear creating a social media pile-on of hate, because that’s what WILL happen. We have far too much hate in our world already, and the internet proves over and over again that people say the most horrible things from the anonymity of the keyboard. If you wouldn’t say it to their face, don’t type in on the internet. One way to handle this would be to become respected for writing thoughtful pattern reviews, giving equal weight to the things that worked out, not just the ones that don’t. Really, if you had a good time with a pattern, let the designer know (my most favorite emails!) and tell your friends with as much fervor as when you run into an error.

6. How do we ensure pattern quality? I wish I knew. We have a lot of new designers flooding into the industry, and while some of their ideas are brilliant, their skills at writing that brilliance down haven’t caught up yet. Some of them are willing to improve, others don’t seem to care – which mirrors every other industry on the planet. Yes, a global pattern review site would be lovely, but few people would be willing to pay to access it – and it would need to be paid for as it would be a huge undertaking to build and run. At the moment, word of mouth is what we have.

I hope fervently that my industry colleagues care as much as I do to make the best product possible for our customers, and I know many who do. When we all step up, and we can all rise together.

I, for one, think YOU’RE worth the effort.

* My core team are Monica, Ursula, the ‘Flakes, the SLO Creative Crew, and the Lucky 13 Ladies – thank you!

The post Thoughts on Pattern Quality appeared first on Hunter's Design Studio.

The original Star Wars movie’s Princess Leia Organa was one of the few movie heroines of my youth.

She wasn’t just “the girlfriend” and she didn’t fit the “helpless damsel in distress” model of the cartoons I grew up on. She held her own against the bad guys, and gave the good guys a solid run for their money. I loved that she was sassy and resiliant, and could tongue-tie the ever-so-cool Han Solo.

When she came back in the most recent movie, she was now General Organa, and like many women of my generation, I took pride in her rise to that rank. Luke ran off to hide and sulk; Han ran off to continue being a scoundrel; but Leia stayed and kept fighting.

I also respect Carrie Fisher, the actress who brought Princess Leia to life. I liked that she just told it like it is with easy, yet pointed, humor, especially in the PR frenzy before The Force Awakens. I admired how she pointed out that we, as women of any age, are held to impossible standards of youth and beauty, as if they are the only things that matter.

She was so much more. As are we.

The General Organa Quilt has paper-piecing patterns for two versions of the words:

It also includes both paper-piecing patterns and templates for the parts General Organa herself that have odd angles. The printed pattern is lengthy (all those letters!) so be sure to read it through before you print or you’ll be wasting paper

The General Organa quilt pattern is available here in my shop. I will be donating all proceeds from both this pattern and The Droid is Not for Sale (Rey & BB-8) to Chick Tech, a nationwide non-profit organization dedicated to retaining women in the technology workforce, and increasing the number of women and girls pursuing technology-based careers.

And may the Force be with you!

The post The General Organa Quilt appeared first on Hunter's Design Studio.

I made this quilt recently, and when I posted it on Instagram (follow me here) a few people asked for a pattern. This isn’t exactly a pattern per se, but close! You’ll need my book Quilt Talk® for the letter patterns, but I’ve done the rest of the math for you: measurements and construction notes are below!

Begin by choosing the colors for your words. If you have a fat quarter of each you’ll have plenty. You might squeak by with a fat quarter of background, but I’d recommend having a half-yard on hand in case you decide to get fancy with how much background you put around the word block.

I chose my colors in a gradient, light to dark. I chose to make NEVER and THELESS in the same color to bring that word together, despite it being split across two lines. I don’t have KONA recommendations for you as I used a mixed bag of fabrics from my stash, and there are at least three different companies’ solids in my house! Make it your own – you’ll love it more!

If you haven’t already switched over to newsprint for your paper-piecing, this would be an excellent time to start as you’ll appreciate it on the smallest letters. It’s more see-through than regular copy paper, and tears off with far more ease. I use the Carol Doak Foundation Newsprint by C&T, but any newsprint that will go through your home printer will do.

The words are 17” wide (finished) and the interior word panel is 28” long (finished). I added a 2” border all round to make it 21” x 32”.

All the letters are CAPITALS.

The kerning/K-space (space between the letters) is a bit fussy, but happily, these things are easy to stretch a little with a hot iron, or ease, as needed.

Start by copying the letters:

• SHE x 2 – copy at 170% for 6.4” tall (just a hair bigger than 6 3/8”)
• WAS WARNED – copy at 50% for 1 7/8” tall
• NEVER – copy at 100% for 3 3/4” tall
• THELESS – copy at 70% for 2 5/8” tall
• PERSISTED – copy at 57% for 2.14” tall (just a hair bigger than 2 1/8”)

Measure your letters as you print them to make sure you maintain size, and adjust accordingly if they’re off. See Quilt Talk® p12 and 13 for printing and sizing tips.

Paper-piece away… I recommend looking at Quilt Talk® for the section on pre-cutting (p13) for letters as it will speed things up for you, and save you fabric.

How I paper- piece begins on p15 if you need a refresher. I like to peel the paper from my letters before I set them – if yours feel wobbly give them a spritz of starch or sizing.

Kerning/K-space (listed in descending order of size):

• SHE x 2: cut 4 @ 6 7/8” x 1 5/16”
• NEVER: cut 4 @ 4 1/4” x 1”
• THELESS: cut 6 @ 3 1/8” x 7/8”
• WAS WARNED: cut 5 @ 2 3/8” x 3 /4” and 1 @ 2 3/8” x 1 5/16” for between WAS and WARNED
• NOTE: There is no K-space between W and A in WAS or WARNED (this tucks the A next to the W more gracefully)
• PERSISTED: cut 8 @ 2 5/8” x 3/4”

Put the K-spaces between their letters, and give each word a hearty press, with steam as needed, to make it 17 1/2” long (including the seam allowances).

Cut 5 @ 1 1/2” x 17 1/2” to put between the rows of words. You could experiment with reducing the word space between NEVER and THELESS for more impact.

Border, quilt, and bind as desired. I recommend something simple on the quilting so as not to dilute the words. I find a simple cross hatch to usually be quite effective – I did a diagonal diamond cross-hatch on this one, one inch apart, basing the diagonal on the interior angle of the V in NEVER. If you choose to make a wallhanging remember that, because a wallhanging doesn’t get the wear of a quilt that gets cuddled a lot, you can afford to be simpler/less dense about your quilting.

This is for personal use only – please don’t sell what you make.

Please post yours on IG – and tag me @huntersds and #neverthelessquilt so I can see it!

The post Quilt Talk® Bonus Pattern – Nevertheless appeared first on Hunter's Design Studio.

I’m pretty steamed.

I’ve discovered that someone who bought my Chunky Wee Zippy Pouches pattern has ripped it off, obviously believing the “just change 5 things or X percent and you’re safe” nonsense.

Whatever the nuts and bolts of copyright law might state about what is in the public domain and what can’t be protected on a pattern for a functional product, it’s just freaking WRONG to plagiarize someone else’s stuff to make money from it.

Look. Most of this industry is made up of nice women, women who often get railroaded by corporate policies that abuse our niceness. We should be looking out for each other, supporting each other, protecting each other. NOT STEALING FROM EACH OTHER. If you have to hide behind the minutiae of copyright law to justify your actions you KNOW you are doing something slimy. So don’t do it. Just DON’T.

If you want to write patterns, then by all means come up with an original idea, and find your way to executing it. When I set out to write this pattern, I hadn’t ever owned nor made any other zipper pouch pattern. I decided I wanted to make a pattern that had a formula for making ANY size you could dream up, and I made a dozen samples getting to that. Yes, I have boxed corners in bags before – there are really only two ways to do it – and I chose the technique that works most accurately for me for the pouch. I didn’t steal anyone’s drawings on how to construct the pouch, I looked at the one in my hand and drew my illustrations from observation. Is it the first ever zippy pouch pattern? Nope. Will it be the last? Nope. Is it all my own work? YES.

Designing is hard work. You have to have your finger on the pulse of the industry to keep current on trends, and at the same time, you need NOT to be looking at too much other stuff or it will pollute your head. For instance, if there is a trend of flying geese going on, by all means design something goose-y with your favorite construction method, but start with a blank slate when you do.

The person who stole my pattern came up with handles to add to it. If you have such an idea, the appropriate way to handle it is like Elizabeth at Occasional Piece did with her modifications to make a mini Sew Together Bag. She wrote her mods in such a way that they did not divulge the content of the original pattern, and then offered it for free on her blog. Bravo. New idea shared, original idea protected. Boom.

If you can’t generate your own ideas yet, you aren’t ready for the prime time arena of the pattern design industry. Despite what might look like overnight successes to an observer, it takes a LOT of work to become decent at this, and even those of us who’ve been at it a while sweat every pattern we attempt. You have to sew a LOT of other stuff to be able to discern and design good construction techniques, and you need to learn expensive software (or hire expensive help) to present your writing and drawings/photos well. What you don’t see is the seventeen tries to get it right before we send it out, nor the anguish that consumes us when, despite our best efforts, an error slips through. You don’t see the teams of unsung testers that help out. You don’t see the mounting scraps of expensive fabric sacrificed to the process. Pattern design involves several learning curves and shortcutting them with plagiarism is not only bad form, it cheats you of the skills you ought acquire to create a long lasting design career.

While I don’t think my plagiarist is an inherently evil or vindictive person*, her willingness to “dabble in pattern design” by dancing on my toes smacks of an ignorance born of casual disregard for what it takes to survive in this industry. She thought she could make a quick buck. While I fully acknowledge that I do this for money, there is no quick buck involved in a carefully crafted pattern. I have somewhere close to 60 hours invested in Chunky Wee Zippy Pouches, from pondering the first idea to sending the first pattern to a distributor, to say nothing of the fabric, fusibles and zippers I ate up along the way. I also write patterns because I care deeply about creating a happy experience for our makers. I want people to enjoy quilting so they do more of it, not give them poorly written crap that wastes their time and their fabric, not to mention makes them want to quit the craft.

While I’m angry that my pattern was poached, I’m even more frustrated with the time this has cost me – time I could have used to design something new to grow my pattern business. I have had to research copyright law, capture screen shots of her website and Facebook pages to support my case, consult my colleagues and legal team, talk to the person that did it (and no, it was no fun to do that), write a Cease and Desist letter, and make a trip to the post office to send it certified. I have had to send pictures of her patterns to my distributors to request that they not purchase them as they are based on mine. I’ve wasted a ton of time trying to get calm about it, and formulating an action plan. I probably could have made a whole new design in the time this has cost – and it’s a loss I’ll never recoup.

In conclusion, I just want to appeal to a higher morality amongst us, regardless of any convoluted points of law. Don’t steal from or undercut your fellow humans. We face enough battles without being attacked by people who should be our peers. Up your game and we all win, truly. #WASWI

Thanks for reading.

* I am choosing not to name this person, nor link to her because I believe that it could turn ugly. I’ve seen and experienced enough nasty internet hate to believe that few people, if any, who receive it, deserve it. I sincerely hope she appreciates that.

The post WASWI – One of My Patterns Has Been Plagiarized appeared first on Hunter's Design Studio.

I made this particular hedgie pincushion pattern a couple of years ago for Janome. Since then, mine has beefed up his collection of needles, and is looking very hedgehog-like!

I decided to tidy up the Hedgie Pincushion pattern a bit, and put it in the shop here. The pattern doesn’t look like the ones I usually write – it’s a photo tutorial instead, with step by step images, which I think do a nice job of showing you the important little details. The hedgie is about 5” long, nose to tail.

I hope you’re changing your needle regularly – perhaps making one of these will help keep you motivated!  Be sure to share with me your photos of your Hedgies on Instagram!  I’m @huntersds there!  Be sure to use the hashtags #hedgiepincushion and #huntersdesignstudio when you post your photo.

The post Hedgie Pincushion Pattern appeared first on Hunter's Design Studio.

When I posted it to social media over the weekend, I had a few requests for details on how to make this quilt, so here they are!

First, you’ll need the pattern for Big Hearted. The pattern has three sizes – this is the middle of the three, the LAP sized quilt, which finishes at 44” x 63” (Orlando MQG is asking for a minimum of 40” x 60”).

This quilt is really fast to make… I’ve made it five times now, and once I’m done choosing fabrics, the top takes me about 3 or 4 hours #sewingatthespeedofsam

INSTRUCTIONS

On Page 4, modify the cutting instructions as follows (my color choices in parens for reference):

• Background fabric (black print): follow as written (note, if your fabric is 44” wide, start with 8 strips and cut the ninth if needed)
• Heart fabric (black and white print): follow as written
• Inner Heart fabric: skip and follow colors below
• Center Heart fabric: skip and follow colors below
• Accent Heart (white): follow as written
• Inner Border (black and white print): follow as written
• Outer Border (black print): follow as written

COLORS

You need 7 colors to render your rainbow. I used Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Teal (blue/green), Blue, and Purple.

Cut 1 strip of each color, the same width as the background fabrics x WOF

• Red: Cut 12 1/2”
• Orange: Cut 20 1/2”
• Yellow: Cut 22 1/2”
• Green: Cut 24 1/2”
• Teal: Cut 6 1/2” and 12 1/2”, plus 2 squares 2 1/2” x 2 1/2” and 4 squares 1 1/4” x 1 1/4” for the snowballs needed to make the Accent Heart
• Blue: Cut 20 1/2”
• Purple: Cut 12 1/2”

ASSEMBLY

• Make the Accent Heart per the instructions at on p5 (step 3).
• Lay out the parts of the quilt top per the drawing on p6, making the changes below (step 4).
• Omit all P, Q, R, S, T and U pieces.
• Replace with the cut colors from above. On the Teal column, place the smaller Teal piece on top, then the Accent Heart, then the larger Teal piece.
• Follow the assembly instructions in the pattern to complete the top.

If you want to see what people are making for this project, hop over to Instagram and search for #stitchedwithlove, #quiltsforpulse, #orlandolove, #orlandomqg. I’m so proud and humbled to be part of a community that makes such wonderful things.

This quilt is in the capable hands of Nancy Stovall at Just Quilting PDX for some long-arm artistry. I would also like to note that the fabric and quilting were donated by Me+You/Hoffman California Fabrics, and the batting was donated by The Warm Company. I’m more than thrilled to have their support to make such projects. There are many, many companies in the quilting industry donating the materials necessary to making and finishing these quilts, and I thought it important that you should know about them so you can support their products if you so choose.

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I’ve been told I shouldn’t use such a harsh word on myself, but it certainly is a clear statement of facts: I offered one of my quilts to QuiltCon, and it was not accepted for display. Don’t worry, my self-esteem is still quite intact… I love the quilt I made, and no amount of quilt show rejection will change that!

I have not attended the last two QuiltCon shows, so my impressions of what got in is somewhat distorted by the limitation of what can be seen on social media. I will say that, while I saw some envelope-pushing work in the feeds, I saw an incredible amount of “been there, seen that.” I have wondered on more than one occasion if the displayed quilts were chosen more for their illustration of and adherence to the definitions of modern quilting (as put forth by the Modern Quilt Guild) than for being perhaps more challenging examples of where quilt-making is going in the moment. Really, how many wonky what-evers (set off-center in a solid background with matchstick quilting) should be displayed? We get it! Point made! Mind you, it is their party, so they do get to groom the guest list. I will be attending the show in Pasadena next month, and am looking forward to making an informed opinion or two about the works in person. And of course, I’ll be sharing those thoughts here!

Here’s my rejected entry:

I made this quilt top in 2014 as I was developing my Five Stars pattern, with not a thought in my head about sending it to competition. I had been playing for some time with the idea of nesting stars, and thought the complexity of nesting them offset was a modern way of looking at things. I chose the color palette because I love ORANGE and teal, and love them both when paired with gray. I chose batiks as I’ve worked with them for years, and love the texture they have over solids. While they are often dismissed in a modern guild or shop as “your mother’s fabric,” they are one of the most hand-made fabrics available to us, a quality that I believe important to contemporary social and ecological interests. And if I’m being candid, I liked the idea of challenging the modern structural ideas with some batiks.

Photography by Bill Volkening

Once the top was done, I was so happy with it that I was bouncing about the studio. I knew my utilitarian quilting skills would do it a terrible disservice, so I hired Nancy Stovall to take it to the next level, and couldn’t be more thrilled with the outcome. Truly, she leveled it up out of the park – it’s stunning. It was at that point that I thought, perhaps, I should show the quilt.

In general, quilt show competitions (not exhibitions – the distinction is important) bother me a bit. As a formally trained artist with an MFA, I find it frustrating that the usual criteria that separates the winner from the runners is craft. And for the record, I’m a HUGE proponent of attaining good craftsmanship; I just don’t think it’s the only thing to look at.

While I have no idea if the QuiltCon judges will be checking quilts for square and checking the binding miters to see if they are stitched (don’t laugh, I was critiqued about the lack of stitches in my miters some 20 years ago on a quilt that went to Paducah), the fact that such technical nit-picking seemed to outweigh artistry made me abandon competition years ago. I was tired of getting judges’ notes about my miters, and having no mention of my artistry, choice of colors, or my prowess with hand-dyeing my fabrics. I see us wanting our work to be considered ART, but then still approaching it like it’s CRAFT. It’s hard for Craft to ascend to Art when it’s judged less for the artistry than the craftsmanship. By these criteria, a Monet would be rejected because the paint was a bit thicker here than it was there.

I know… it’s a bit of a chewy conversation, but hey, I’m trained in thinking about art this way, and these are the thoughts I ponder in the wee hours. You can take the girl out of art school, but it’s hard to take the art school out of the girl!

Anyway! The quilt won’t be heading to QuiltCon, but no matter.

Oh, and I still don’t sew down my miters ;-p

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