Watershed moments in my quilting journey

This simple, little scrappy lap quilt could be a turning point for me.

Up until now, quilting has been a learning experience. Nearly every quilt I have made has been a challenge, which is why I still consider myself a quilting newbie, despite the 25 years I have been making quilts.

Nothing drives me more than a challenge. It is personal for me. I have no desire to enter shows or to win ribbons. I just want to continue to do the best of my ability and to perhaps enhance that ability along the way. There are so many skills I have yet to master. That can only happen through diligence and often times, repetitiveness. I haven’t given myself that opportunity. For varied reasons, I haven’t devoted myself to quilting. I’m afraid this attitude has limited me. I struggle way too much to enjoy the absolute joy of quilting. This little project may be a signal. That may be changing.

In addition, I have always had a desire to design my own quilts, rather than simply following someone else’s pattern. I want to change that, which circles back to this quilt.

It started years ago

This quilt was a fun project in that many months and maybe even years ago, I just started sewing pieces of scrap fabric, of which there is a mountain of it, into configurations that could be trimmed down into blocks. The exercise is very enjoyable. I put on an audio book and listen while I sew. It is mindless work, which makes it easy to concentrate on the book, rather than what I’m creating. Once enough pieces are sewn together, they are trimmed to make blocks. While doing this recently, it occurred to me that I had enough blocks to make a small lap quilt.

I added a few border pieces around the blocks, added sashing and corner squares to ‘round it all out,’ and I ended up with a quilt.

When it was all put together, I had no idea how I’d like to quilt it, so I started with the dense quilting on the bottom border. I wanted to create a shadow effect, so I wanted the bottom border to be darker than the side border. I tried to achieve that through quilting. When I finished that, I wondered what to do about all those wonky blocks. The answer to that was pretty simple – stippling.

Stippling was a turning point for me

I remember the first time I encountered a quilt that was machine quilted with stippling. It was during my journalism career when I covered a quilt show for the local newspaper for which I worked. It was a long time ago – back in the 1990’s – when machine quilting was just starting to compete with the long held tradition of hand-quilting.

I fell in love with the effect. It is so simple; it is one of the first stitches new machine quilters learn. I asked the quilter about it and right then and there, I was hooked.

That was the day I decided I wanted to make my first quilt.

I have no idea where this journey will take me, but so far, I’m enjoying the ride.

It is GAME ON for 2026

 

It is a new year and I have been looking forward to The Quilt Show’s 2026 Block of the Month (BOM).

This year, the quilt, left, designed by one of my favorite quiltmakers, Becky Goldsmith, is called Game On!

Becky is mostly known for her applique work, but I doubt there is anything she can’t do, and do it well.

She was also the designer of one of my

favorite quilt projects, Sizzle, right, the last quilt I finished last summer. I wrote about that project in a previous blog post.  Sizzle now resides on the day bed in my sewing room/spare bedroom.

Becky’s design for ‘Game On’ was inspired by an exhibit of carnival game boards she explored during a visit to the Folk Art Museum in New York.

‘Game On’ has so many colors and different fabrics.

One of my favorite things to do with a new project is to pick out fabrics I’ve collected through my quiltmaking years. Normally, this is a fun exercise, but for this one, I couldn’t actually envision how I would make this in different colors. So, I decided that for the first time, I would just buy the kit and make the quilt as it is.

I have bought only one other quilt kit, many, many years ago. Admittedly I have yet to finish it. Someday I will get back to it, though my tastes have changed since I first bought it. Perhaps there will be more to say about that project at another time…

The ‘2026 Game On’ quilt kit comes in two options, one in solid fabrics and one in prints. I chose the latter.

When the package came with about 17 yards of fabric, all broken down into mostly fat quarters, the term used for approximately ¼ yard pieces, it was very exciting. I spent some time arranging the pieces according to the swatches in the enclosed printout. All those delicious fabrics with a mix of small prints, large prints, polka dots, and more, all the delicious colors, really made my day. I love new fabric and have bittersweet feelings about cutting into those pretty pieces, but once the first cut is done and the first seam sewn, I’m hooked.

Lots of quilters and podcasters and others offer BOMs. The way this BOM works, is that every month for the entire year, new directions are revealed at thequiltshow.com, along with instructional videos by the designer. And if that isn’t enough help, Barbara Black, a blogger, teacher, and Quilt Show employee offers her take on things through a live video every month and through her blog. She explains other methods of doing things and offers shortcuts and hints and tips that she has picked up over the years that are very helpful. She also answers quilter’s questions on The Quilt Show’s forum.

The pattern is free to members of The Quilt Show Star Members, of which I have been since Aug. 2020. I consider this to be one of the very best resources for quilters.

Most of the quilts I have made in the last six years have been Quilt Show BOMs. The designers of these projects are some of the best quilters in the world. I won’t lie; these projects have all been a learning experience for me. I still consider myself to be a newbie quilter, even though I have been quilting for about 25 years. There is always so much to learn and learning new skills always require practice.

I have always loved a good challenge, so I have made it a point to devote myself to this one project every year even if I never make anything else. Life often simply gets in the way of my quilting desires. But this year, I feel a renewed sense of creativity and productivity coming on. I can’t wait to see how that goes…

Its a two-fer!

Mere hours after I finished my last quilt top, I started working on another. The blocks for this project has been sitting idle for awhile.

This was a fun project with no worries, no patterns, and no seams to match. The blocks are made up by sewing random leftover scraps of together in no particular order or design.

This makes so much sense, because isn’t that what quilts are and have always been, sewing small pieces of fabric together to make bigger pieces of fabric until it is big enough. This is mindless sewing, therapy at its best because there is no color matching or perfect points to fret over.

I started this scrap-busting exercise more than a year ago and just added finished blocks to the growing pile. I made three just after finishing my last quilt top and was surprised to realize I had enough to make a lap quilt.

It is rather silly that when I watch TV in the evening, I often snuggle under pink blanket. It dawned on me that I have all these quilts hanging around, and yet, I’m cover up with a Dollar Store blanket. That just isn’t right! So, I had been thinking about making a lap quilt. This is it!

 

Satisfaction, finally

  

When I first saw this pattern, way back last January, I fell in love with it, thinking it would be lots of work, but lots of fun as well. I was half right. With more than 200 blocks, precision would be vital. To get all those pieces to fit, these 5 ½” blocks had to be pretty close to the mark. That means the cutting, sewing, and pressing had to be exact, or at least as close as I could make it. 

This was the 2025 Block of the Month (BOM) project hosted by The Quilt Show (TQS). The quilt is called “Laurel Ridge” and was designed by Lynn Wilder. The finished quilt is about 90” square. It is much larger than my design wall, so forgive the display as it flows out onto the floor and looks a little droopy.

BOM quilt patterns are free to members of the Quilt Show, of which I have been for many years. The BOM which comes out on the first day of the year every year is a major perk to joining The Quilt Show, what could loosely be described as an online quilt magazine/television show; but, there is so many more. Everything there is to learn about quilting can be gleaned from this valuable resource. 

With a BOM, a how-to video from the designer is posted each month with directions for the work to be undertaken that month. Some months, there were 20 identical blocks to make. Other months, there were different ‘assignments.’ It all wraps up at the end of the year, as this one has.

My first challenge with this quilt, as with all others, is to pick out the fabric. It comes as a kit, complete with fabric included, but I wanted to use my own fabric, that which I have been collecting over the years. The only fabric I needed to buy was the border print, which is also used throughout the quilt’s design.To give me some clarity on just what I wanted, I spent an afternoon coloring the blank pattern with some of my favorite colors. Then, I simply picked out the fabrics that would match those colors. That made it easy to substitute the colors. I made a grid and added my own swatches to the color code in the quilt pattern.

My biggest challenge was that the year was mapped out differently than I would have done it. I would have started in the middle and worked my way out. And, it was only after I was finished with all the blocks that I understood how Lynn Wilder decided on each month’s assignments based on nine sections that would make up the actual layout.

For example, when I finished all the blocks and was attempting to assemble it, I put one section, shown at right, onto my design wall. This was one of nine sections that had to be sewn together to complete the quilt.

Notice that the block in the lower left corner, the lavender and yellow block is positioned wrong. Further examination indicates that there is another block, the just two blocks above it, is also wrong. 

That was one of my biggest problems. You really had to study the pattern to see if all the blocks were positioned correctly. So many mistakes hid in plain sight. This was actually quite maddening. It required honing my seam-ripping skills, of which I am becoming quite proficient. 

When I was all done, having completed all nine sections and two borders, I went to bed feeling pretty proud of myself. 

But when I woke up I looked at it one more time before taking it off the design wall and putting it into the “to be quilted” pile.

That was when I saw it. The entire section was turned wrong. The pattern was correct, but the entire section was inverted. The diagonals were all going the right way, but the uppermost and lowermost blocks were reversed. It was then that I began to appreciate the pattern, the symmetry, and the care that it took to make it all work. Lynn Wilder became my latest quilting hero. She really was amazing, and made it all look so easy. I realized that the design made such perfect sense. 

I decided that I had no choice but to grab my seam ripper once more and take apart the two borders, and that entire section, turn it around and sew it back together again. I am not sure how many of those mistakes I made and fixed, but I think I found all of them. 

I was finally satisfied as I looked at this quilt from every angle. Only when I didn't see any more mistakes, could I call it done. 

Once this is quilted, I am going to love it like all the others. But there were lots of teaching moments in this one.

I love a completed quilt

It never fails; I get such a thrill from finishing a quilt. A completed quilt is always the culmination of a journey filled with challenges and wonderment. The quilts I decide to make always challenge me. It is an element of the process that I can’t seem to live without. I don’t love all quilts. I’m picky. I have to love it because I know what goes into it. That is my process for now. I may be content someday to just make quilts because it is fun. I may make them to sell someday, but for now I am just content to surround myself with what I love.

My quilting process begins with picking out a pattern. I have to love it. 

I loved this quilt—Sizzle—the 2019 Block of the Month project, free to members of The Quilt Show. It was designed by Becky Goldsmith, who did an awesome job creating and sharing this lovely pattern and providing instructional videos. She also included numerous tips and ideas that were very helpful. 

This project took up most of 2019 for me, even though I got a pretty late start on it. The blocks were paper pieced and the border was appliqued.

The project was billed as a kit, but the pattern was free to members of The Quilt Show, co-hosted by Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims. There is always so much to learn, which is what I like most about quilting. I like to learn new skills and practice all others. I enjoy successes and persevere through the failures, which are rarely in equal balance. Sometimes, the annoyances from little things, like thread fraying, sewing for a while before I realize my bobbin is empty, and dealing with thread tension errors that hone my unsewing technique as I rip out stitches. All is forgotten though; once I take my finished quilt out of the dryer, realizing the colors didn’t run or fade and seams are all still in-tact. At that point I can finally breathe as I inspect and admire the finished project. Washing a hand-made quilt is tense because you just don’t know what will happen when it gets saturated. But, it is also exciting because during the process, magic happens. The fabric shrinks a little around the stitches, giving it that poufy quilty look. Every time I wash a quilt, I am excited to take it out of the dryer. I have never been disappointed.

I wasn’t sure how I wanted to quilt this quilt, but I knew I wanted to use free-motion quilting. That is pretty vague, so I took a picture of each motif. My phone has a stylus, so I decided to try out quilting designs right on the pictures. That worked out great.

For the background, I was so happy with how my last little quilt turned out see here that I decided to quilt it the same way, thanks to the inspiration of Angela Walters, a phenomenal quilter whose work I have been studying. I am pleased with how it turned out.

This quilt reminds me of my dad

This quilt means more to me than some of my others because it reminds me of my dad, who died in 2003. My father was one-of-a-kind. There wasn’t anything he couldn’t do if he set his mind to it. He taught himself everything he ever did.

I recall one Christmas, when I was very young, my dad made a three-dimensional Christmas star out of cardboard, covered in red, green, and silver wrapping paper. As a little girl, it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen as we put it atop our Christmas tree. I wonder what ever happened to that star. It had perfect points, was completely symmetrical, and was a flawless example of how mathematical equations could make all the pieces fit together. I did not inherit his love of math; in fact I avoid it whenever I can. But I did inherit his ability to learn whatever I want to know, see things through to the end, and exercise patience, even with the most tedious of tasks. So when I look at this quilt, I can’t help but think of him. This one’s for you Dad!