Overcoming quilting anxiety with a test run

After finishing my "digging deeper" quilt top, I felt both excited and nervous about quilting it. I was excited, because I wanted to explore and learn techniques that can heighten and add depth to a quilt design. But I also felt nervous, because I still have very little experience and consequently little intuition for what …

“Digging deeper” quilt top design

My projects typically start with a fabric that simply inspires me. When I browse fabric stores, there are typically fabrics call out to me, but I don't always know immediately what they want to be transformed into. Often it's not a single fabric that attracts me, but combinations and the challenge is to figure out …

Bringing order into a scrappy quilt?

The project I'm going to talk about here started several years ago, on one of many afternoons that I spent sewing at my grandmother's house. My grandmother has sewn garments for decades and has accumulated a huge bag full of scraps. Often I would sit on the floor in her sewing room, empty the bag …

The Small Forest Backpack — Part 2: Assembly and demo

It's been a really long time since my last post and even longer since the last post on a sewing project. This is what happened: Early last spring I finally started feeling fully energized again and motivated to finally move forward with some of my research. So for several months I focused on work. The …