My son called me the other day from school. He’s away at college. He asked me if he could use the credit card to purchase some pajama bottoms online. He said that all of his pajamas had rips in the crotch. So, like a good mother I said…..NO! I have a ton of NHL fabric that just arrived at the shop. I will make you several pairs. Well, I made

A good quilt has a good design. Wow. That’s not exactly profound. A great quilt has a good design, and then another good design. Well, that’s a little better. What I mean by that is that the best quilts have multiple components when looking long enough. Whether that is a primary and secondary design, or whether that is a design, and then a closer inspection that yields interesting fabrics. Yes,

So I was talking about sorting your colors into clear bins last time. Have you done that yet? If you haven’t, then you better hop to it because now I am going to tell you the really fun part. So we all know that all blues are not created equal–and that goes for reds, yellows, greens and more. When you look at the colors in each box, there are a

Time to talk about how we are actually sorting fabric and fabric selection. This applies mostly to scrap quilting, but can be used for any type of quilt you want to make. I have a little decision tree that I use. This is what it looks like. My favorite color is orange, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have blue or green moods every once in a while. Our

So you want to take the fear out of color selection for your quilts. Well, much of this discussion is going to focus around scrap quilting, but much of what I talk about will relate to all color selection for quilting. The biggest thing that customers ask for help with is color selection. There are so many schools of thought on color, that it will take a series of posts

So, when I wrote my first book, this is one of the first blocks that I had created. I had known that I would use only 3 template sizes for all of my blocks–3 1/2”, 4 1/2” and 5 1/2”. They played so well together in terms of least common multiple, and how well they fit together in combinations of their half square triangles and more. Well, I came up

I just wanted a break from all the packaging orders and sewing things that I was “supposed” to be sewing. It’s January. I just wanted to break loose and sew something totally frivolous. What could be more frivolous than little zippy heart pouches? I want to fill these with candy. They’re little. So, you can’t really put a lot of candy into these. But, it’s perfect. They are small enough

I was always under the impression that hand applique was the gold standard amongst quilters. I still believe this is true. If you’re going to applique, then it should be done by hand. Wait–whoa! I don’t have a lifetime to make one quilt. There are some people that find this to be an activity of relaxation. I find it to be an activity of frustration. While it is true that