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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)

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

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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!

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Why this article and not all the others about how to hide more vegetables in my desserts? It hits closer to home: I’m a woman who has survived a heart attack, and lives managing a couple of genetic, chronic heart conditions with an assist from implanted borg parts. And besides, I already have a superb carrot cake recipe in my bag of tricks

“But one afternoon… Anne rode her bike, climbed off, and complained of nausea and fatigue. Her right arm ached. Blaming indigestion, she took Tums. They didn’t help. She vomited. Her husband suggested urgent care. She declined.

The next morning, Anne collapsed in their bathroom and could not be revived.”

• Your self-worth is defined by your productivity, so you better pack your calendar until it squeaks.
• Your right to take rest must be earned; resting is for the weak and the lazy; taking sick leave or vacation is discouraged.
• Women are expected to sacrifice themselves for the good of family, job and society, and not rock the boat. Don’t be a bother.
• Corporate profiteering matters more than taking care of people.
• Women’s heart attacks have different symptoms, and women presenting with heart issues are taken less seriously (“You’re just anxious – have you tried meditation?”). I had classically male heart attack symptoms and was still told by a male doc that they were going to take out my gall bladder because I was “overweight, over 40, and female.” Talk about misogynistic profiling.

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Note: I often write for my industry, and this is one of those such times.  The start of a year means the announcement of new brand ambassadorships! If you’ve ever thought of applying for one, please give these thoughts a read to see if that bright shiny opportunity really IS in your best interests.

Please note that I’m NOT saying you shouldn’t do it.  I am saying you should give ambassadorships very careful thought and evaluation, especially if your time is precious!

The Company You Keep

• First of all, let’s take a look at the company: if you’re chosen, you’ll be publicly associated with them, and perhaps their other ambassadors – sort of like dating a celebrity. So it’s important to know if their values align with yours, should either of you decide to take a public stand about something.

• Contracts: yes, this arrangement should have a contract, because contracts protect EVERYONE. If the company won’t offer or agree to a contract, then you can’t guarantee the terms, and you, being the littlest player in the partnership, are the one that’s most likely to lose if issues arise.
• More contracts: the contract should ALSO outline what they are going to do for you, not just what you’re doing for them. Look… it’s exciting to be offered an opportunity, but don’t let the excitement make you ignore what YOU need from the arrangement.

Show Me The Money!

• Usually, you will not be paid for ambassadorships in the kind of currency you can use at a grocery store.
• Usually, you will receive exposure on their site and/or social media. In fact, you will probably be chosen based on your social media numbers to boost theirs, not just your design skills.

• So let’s talk about the product you might get (and note that I’m in the quilt industry so this is thru the lens of quilt related products): sometimes ambassadorships don’t get the coveted fabrics… you get the stuff that’s not selling well (in the hopes that this promo effort will boost it). It’s painful to try to pull something nice out of a ho-hum line of fabric, and the success of that will reflect on your design skills, not on a fabric line that has issues.
• OR you might have access to their entire fabric or product line, but have the limitation to using only that company’s products publicly for the duration of the ambassadorship. One colleague noted that this meant she couldn’t help promote a friend’s new fabric for a different company.
• Also, let’s talk about the cost of that fabric… to you, at retail, it might be $13/yard, but to the company supplying it at cost, it’s about $3 or $4/yd. So they’re giving you about $30-40 in fabric for a lap quilt (and you still need to supply everything needed to finish it).

• What are your skills worth? With a consensus that minimum wage should be $15/hr, let’s just say your hourly rate as a skilled sewist should be at least $25/hr (and this doesn’t take your design skill value into consideration). So you are receiving product valued at about two hours of your time, and the rest of the time you put into it is your “donation” to the project.
• If you’re receiving an expensive tool or a machine, you’ll probably have to return it once you leave the ambassadorship

Time: the Non-Renewable Resource

• You’ll be need to make things with the products supplied, often on a specific schedule. Do you have the time to dedicate to this? How does it fit with your personal/family schedule?

• How long does it take you to design something? Write it up?  Test and edit it? Sew it/quilt it/finish it? How is that stacking up against your “wages” above?
• And are you being realistic about your time estimates? Pssst… multiply it by three for a better estimate – trust me.

Social Media and Exposure

• The company will expect you to promote them on your social media and blog.
• They’ll tell you how to promote their product. But often, your arrangement will not specify what they will do for YOU. How many posts you’ll feature in.  Whether or not they are IG stories (that disappear), or if you could be the last slide in an IG carousel, etc. This is the exposure you’re working for, so it’s important to understand exactly what they’re promising.
• How much time does it take you to photo your work? Write and schedule and interact with your blog and social media posts? Make and edit videos?
• Research: Go look at their posts that promote other artists. What percentage of their following are interacting with those posts? Look at your own stats: do your promo posts get good traction, or does your following prefer something else? There’s nothing more frustrating that working hard on content that isn’t seen.

• AND remember that all social media posts are at the whim of the ever-changing algorithms.  Everything we post is becomes the equivalent of the newspaper on the bottom of the digital birdcage pretty quickly.

Adding It Up

Based on your math, the cost of your time versus the value of the exposure,  are ambassadorship a good deal for you? Would it be better to buy the yardage/product/tool you like, and make things, on your own timeline, that excite you?

And if you add up those hours for a year, is there a bigger, better project you could take on that will move your business further?

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The beginning of a new year always brings out resolutions to use up your fabric stash and buy nothing

Stash reduction is a noble goal, but let’s be realistic… how many of us can actually pull it off?

May I suggest, instead, a way to do it that allows you to still buy a little fabric? After all, if we don’t support our stores they won’t be there for us when we need them!

Grab a small notebook or journal to keep close to your fabric (or you can use this cute stash reduction download!)

Every time you use up fabric, write it down, and keep a running total of how much you used (use the fabric requirements from your patterns as estimates)

Every time you buy fabric, write this down too, and keep a running total. See below for my friend Kory’s fabric page in her bullet journal!

Try to keep the “bought fabric” total smaller than the “used fabric” total: just buy a little less than you use.

At the end of the year you will have reduced your stash AND supported your locals stores.

WIN-WIN!

P.S. You can also cull your stash to donate to your local charity sewing program like Project Linus – it all goes in the “used” column. Another WIN-WIN!

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Why not taking a compliment gracefully costs you money

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How many times have you heard a woman counter a compliment with something that deflates the kind words?

In the craft industry, this means if you tell a woman her work is wonderful, you’ll be presented with an extensive list of all the perceived flaws to behold:

• “There’s a spot here where I wobbled a few stitches”
• “I ran out of the purple fabric here”
• “My points don’t match here”
• Essentially: “Here’s where I need to be more accurate, more PERFECT”

Someone just told you your art is great, and you come back with a version of “No, it’s not”

Downplaying our talents, our accomplishments, and ourselves is all wrapped up in women being taught not to take up space. But this isn’t just another version of women being cultured to dim their shine.

This is also economics:

How will we command a good price for our work when we tell people how substandard it is?

Women and their work are already underpaid. And if we keep pointing out all the places we fail to be PERFECT, we’re never going to close that wage gap.

The next time someone compliments you or your work, try this:

• “Thank you!”
• “I worked hard to make that bit perfect”
• “I’m really proud of this”
• “I won a ribbon for this!”

BOTTOM LINE: Stop being afraid to shine

The more space we take up, the more we’ll get used to doing it.

And we’ll get used to seeing more women taking up space so it’ll become more common to us (and others), and we’ll stop thinking it’s weird or wrong (because it’s NOT).

And we’ll stop giving people a reason to underpay us.

Me and my 3rd Place Ribbon at QuiltCon 2019! And it’s ORANGE!

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I’m British, and like most expats from other countries, I’m often asked to explain our cultural foods like pudding.

I heard you laughing… yes, British culinary exploits have been the butt of many a cheeky joke, but since the Great British Baking Show, I think we’ve proved that we make some rather scrumptious things, especially puddings.

What actually *is* pudding?

Although it’s used as a synonym for dessert, it can be sweet or savory:

• Treacle pudding – a warm, dense, cake with a syrupy top, cooked by steaming it in a deep bowl (usually made with treacle’s lighter cousin, Golden Syrup, just for extra confusion)
• Christmas (or plum, or figgy) pudding – a warm, dense, steamed cake full of spices and dried fruits, often doused in brandy and set alight
• Sticky Toffee Pudding – a cake filled with chopped dates, served warm with runny toffee (caramel sauce) on it, and maybe hot custard too
• Steak and kidney pudding – a steamed version of a meat and gravy pie, also made in a deep bowl
• Black (or blood) pudding – sausage, made of pork or beef blood, bread crumbs, and suet
• Yorkshire pudding – a side dish made of eggs, flour and milk, cooked in hot fat, served with meat and gravy. If you add sausages you have toad-in-the-hole, thought how you get from sausages to toads confounds me!
• Pease pudding – a split pea porridge, often with ham (think pea soup so thick your spoon tries to stand up)
• Bread pudding – a lovely dessert of bread and custard, usually served warm
• Rice pudding – another lovely dessert of rice and milk, cooked until creamy (with nutmeg!) and also served warm

What isn’t pudding?

Pudding! What Americans consider to be pudding (thick, milky, and served cold) we Brits categorize by how they’re made: they’re custards if eggy, blancmange if milky but starch based, and jelly if gelatin based; jam is our jelly, and jelly is our Jello.

Got it?

Clear as mud, right?

So, what’s for pudding?

DISCLOSURE POLICY: This post may contain affiliate links. If you purchase those items through my links I will earn a very small commission. You will not pay more when buying a product through my link. I will never recommend something that I do not use myself. These commissions help me to be able to keep providing you with great content. Thank you, in advance for your support!

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This is Women’s History Month, and I feel like, finally, it’s the right time to tell the story about this artwork.

Why I’m A Feminist (click to read the larger image)

The idea to make this piece came to me a few years ago, as I took in a collection of works, made by a man, that included social commentary about the plight of women. I was frustrated that a man felt he could make art about my experience without ever walking a mile in my high heels, and I was frustrated that an organization would hang that work instead of looking for the work of women making similar statements with their art.

I’m tired of how much authority and space we give to men who write about the experiences of women; there’s an arrogance in usurping the stories you have not personally lived, and it’s time for women to be the documentarians of their own experiences, not men. Note to the fellas: no matter how woke you think you are about feminism, you will never know the depth and differences of women’s lives, so sit down and hush.

It got me thinking about what kind of art I would make about my own experiences as a woman, and this idea for a quilted fiber art piece began to take hold. It was a slow, burning hold because I didn’t want to live in the space of remembering these incidents, of feeling them again, of documenting them, of being asked to explain them. I also knew there would be the inevitable trolls* once I shared the work publicly.

But art always demands its right to exist. Thus, I spent two years both steeped in this project whilst trying to run away from it. I lost myself in the technicality of testing the construction for a while, and then, finally, it was time to stitch the first words.

I am a fiber artist, thus cloth and thread are my tools. Women have used embroidery for centuries to both learn our letters and teach our stories, so I felt it was the right medium for this work. I’m really glad #metoo exists, but it’s easy to see that hashtag and avoid the pain and horror that lives underneath it unless you read the actual story, in all its messy detail.

This story is IN the details. It’s not an easy read, and stitching through it was both harrowing and cathartic; it’s definitely this woman’s history. It’s the tip of my iceberg, and I could make a hundred more pieces about this and we still would not yet reach the water level. The violations are so common and commonplace that I know I have normalized many of them, and forgotten thousands more.

This is a personal story, one of the death by a thousand cuts that patriarchal society has brought to bear on me as a girl, a young lady, and a woman.

It’s the story of so many things that happened to me: things that showed me where my rights aren’t equal; where the world has been constructed for the privilege of men; where my body is not considered my own; where my needs are deemed irrelevant, and where my concerns are written off as hysteria.

It’s the story of how I’ve been penalized for being a woman, a wife, and a mom. The story of where the societal expectations of being nice anyway have cornered me and silenced me.

It’s the story of knowing that something felt wrong, but having no one teach me or show me it wasn’t okay, so I didn’t speak up.

It’s the story of carrying the guilt and rage for not saying something, not doing something, not pushing back, and not calling it out because silence is safer. Silence meant I might not be hurt worse. Silence meant I might keep my job, and thus my home, my food, and the shoes on my son’s feet.

And yet, every woman I have shown this work to has said she could tell a similar story.

Every. Woman.

And many of them have been shockingly matter-of-fact about it, too, which means we’ve been dealing with this for far too long.

Think about that. This is systemic at an undeniably insidious level.

It has been intense, powerful, humbling, and devastating to be with other women as they read this quilt. So many women telling me their story. From women in their 20s to women in their 80s, they have turned to me in tears, us holding each other tight in the sisterhood of shared trauma.

Women reading every word. Women reading it out loud to each other. Women telling me this made them feel like maybe they could be braver now, and me telling them I fervently hope so.

Women telling me to keep making this art because we need it.

We do need feminist art. Art can speak volumes where words can fail. Art is a language that we can use powerfully to speak up and speak out.

While this work is my story, I think the real story is that so many of us can tell a similar one.

—

Made in 2018. Digitally designed and hand embroidered by me, Sam Hunter. Quilted by my dear friend Nancy Stovall. Honored with 3rd Place in the Handwork category at QuiltCon 2019.

P.S. I will not transcribe this work in a public place so that none of it can be used out of context against me or other women. If you want to know what it says, please read it.

* I have been threatened with bodily harm for my feminist writing, and I have been threatened with a lawsuit for allegedly using this artwork to name someone as a rapist. If you read every word, you will see that no one is named, nor do the words “rape” or “rapist” appear on the work. These threats were bullying power plays, attempts to silence me by using fear tactics. They were all done by men.

Another story we women know so very well.

Also: Go here for a Quilt Alliance interview of me talking about this artwork

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