Blog Index

  • Who Gets to Make Art?

    Who Gets to Make Art?

    I’ve been thinking a lot lately about our world of quilts, and by that I don’t mean the larger world–just our own little world. I’ve made some hideous quilts, some use-up-this-fabric quilts (above), some…

  • Fly those Geese!

    Fly those Geese!

    When I first starting making this quilt, I cut each flying geese block by hand because I was not able to rotary cut. I drew out the lines, cut a triangle, and piled up…

  • Wealth of Days • Quilt Finish

    Wealth of Days • Quilt Finish

    Wealth of DaysQuilt no. 24757″ wide by 70 1/2″ high From my journal9 January 2019: “Here we go again. Today I had rotator cuff repair surgery on the right arm. My little joke is…

  • Build Me A House

    Build Me A House

    I dream of houses. I dream of houses with quilt blocks on their sides, or quilty houses I can make any size. This started when I was asked to help beta test for BlockBase+…

  • Build a Medallion Quilt with Elizabeth and BlockBase+

    Build a Medallion Quilt with Elizabeth and BlockBase+

    Sunny Flowers • quilt #246 • 54″ square Welcome back to BlockBase+ Week! In this post, Post #2 of BB+ week, we’ll build a medallion quilt. UPDATE: Giveaway Contest is closed. Thanks for entering!…

  • A Week of Creativity using BlockBase+ • Giveaway!

    A Week of Creativity using BlockBase+ • Giveaway!

    Sunny Flowers • quilt no. 246 • 54″ square This is BlockBase+ week, and in one week, I’ll be giving away a free copy of the software! UPDATE: Giveaway is Closed. Thanks to all…

  • First Monday Quilt

    First Monday Quilt

    In December 2019, a few young friends had wanted to learn to quilt, so we met together in a group we called First Monday Sew-days. It was a short-lived enterprise, collapsing into covid in…

  • Renewal

    Renewal

    “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” TS Eliot, Four Quartets Where I started…

  • Thieves Meet Old Woman

    Thieves Meet Old Woman

    At least that’s what Google Translate said it meant, when I typed in… …which is the newest song for the newest dance craze, introduced to me by my daughter on Instagram as well as…

  • Thoughts on Constructing a Quilt Block

    Thoughts on Constructing a Quilt Block

    Note: This post has been updated (March 2024), with notes on the pattern and the quilt. See below. Recently I had a chance to do some beta-testing on BlockBase+, which is a revised version…

  • Book Reviews & Giveaway

    Book Reviews & Giveaway

    The linking went like this: teaching at Surfside Guild –> looking at their website to get to know them –> finding their Block of the Month page –> jumping up and down because now…

  • Memorium: Speech Acts for a Dying World

    Memorium: Speech Acts for a Dying World

    Speech Acts for a Dying World19″ high by 20″ wide I thought a long time about whether to alter this quilt’s perfect original symmetry of twenty inches square. The design, by Yvonne Fuchs, called…

  • Rounding the Corner into Spring: This and That for March 2021

    Rounding the Corner into Spring: This and That for March 2021

    I’m leading with this photo, the green leaves just beginning to bud out on the airy branches at the park where I walk most days. It’s three laps, 2.2 miles, almost 4 km, then…

  • Wealth of Days •  Quilt Top Finish

    Wealth of Days • Quilt Top Finish

    As a culture we are in danger of falling out of touch, not only with objects, but with the intelligence they embody: the empathy that is bound up in tangible things….A well-made object is…

  • This and That • February 2021

    This and That • February 2021

    Little three-year-old Gio came to live with my son Chad and his wife Kristen last year, and when this February rolled around, I decided that he had become, in effect, my grandson, and in…

  • Picties and Verities • Quilt Finish

    Picties and Verities • Quilt Finish

    Finally! This baby has a new name: Picties and Verities. What, you ask? Well, that phrase was in a poem I read about a thousand years ago, and I liked it and wrote it…

  • Postcard from Burano

    Postcard from Burano

    Over the space of several years, I tried three times to get to the small island of Burano, just a vaparetto ride out of Venice. And when my husband and I finally made it…

  • California Bear • collage quilt finished

    California Bear • collage quilt finished

    California Bear, a collage quilt started in a class with Laura Heine at Road to California 2020, is finished and hanging on my sewing room wall. (It just seems pretentious to call it a…

  • Making a Curve for the Dungeon of Cute • Affinity Designer Tutorial

    Making a Curve for the Dungeon of Cute • Affinity Designer Tutorial

    Yes, I’m going to talk about making curves, but it’s part of a path that began after I finished the Bee Happy Quilt. You know what comes next: either get it quilted by check,…

  • I Hear America Singing

    I Hear America Singing

    I finished the red, white and blue version (top only) of Shine: The Circle Quilt and I did it by the time of the Inauguration of our new President, my goal. This is not…

  • January This-and-That

    January This-and-That

    To start us off right for January, Carol of the Gridster Bee chose Lori Holt’s Tall Pines Quilt Block, part of her Sew Your Stash series, found on YouTube. I lost my mind and…

  • The Last of the Shine RWB Blocks: 22

    The Last of the Shine RWB Blocks: 22

    Happy Birthday to this blog!Fourteen years of blogging: writing, sewing, quilting, venting, writing-back-to-you, reading and I still love writing this. I still love reading your letters and with a few exceptions was able to…

  • Happy New Year with Shine Block 20

    Happy New Year with Shine Block 20

    This is the second of the three last posts for the Shine quilt done in red, white and blue, and these last three are all new blocks, found in the Nine More Blocks from…

  • Happy New Year with Shine Block 21

    Happy New Year with Shine Block 21

    Something short and sweet for you today: how to make block 21. I’m posting these last few blocks of Red, White and Blue SHINE in quick succession, so others can these posts for references.…

  • Happy Old Year Ending • 2020

    Happy Old Year Ending • 2020

    I just had to lead off this Happy Old Year Ending Post with one of my favorite memes from this year. So it is with fervor and conviction that I say: Happy Old Year…

  • Dave’s Cozy Quilt • Quilt Finish 2020

    Dave’s Cozy Quilt • Quilt Finish 2020

    My husband takes walks. Daily walks where he brings home dozens of flower and leaf photos. He specializes in color, in contrast, in finding whatever others pass over as they zip by in their…

  • Christmas * 2020

    Christmas * 2020

    Merry Christmas, everyone! Elizabeth will be closed for a few days while she tests out her new Christmas Present and thoroughly makes a mess of her sewing room. She will emerge, eventually. Thanks for…