My daily life is filled with quilts and fabrics as a designer of both. But my love of quilts and fabrics began many years ago. It seems like I have always been drawn to needlecraft. My earliest memories are filled with sewing of some kind – including a shoebox of small doll clothes that I [...]

Hello everyone, My name is Debbie Maddy and I live in a small town in north Texas with my husband of 38 years. We have two grown sons. Probably like many of you, I learned to sew as a young girl. I did all kinds of needlework and was a garment sewer until 1982 when [...]

How fun to be part of all the guest bloggers this month! But oh my goodness, what to write? Beth and I are partners of the pattern company Lizzie B Cre8ive. We’ve been in the pattern biz for 3 years, but have been quilters, of course, for much much longer than that. The fun part [...]

Welcome to my blog! My name is Sue Hauser and I was thrilled when Michele asked me to be a guest blogger. I am the owner of Alderwood Quilts, which is an internet quilt shop. I live in Oregon in the foothills of the coast range, where we have a small lavender farm in addition [...]

What fun to be a guest blogger on Quilting Gallery. My name is Lesley Riley. I am a life-long resident of the Washington DC area, mother of 6, grandmother of 5. I began quilting in 1971, a baby quilt for my first born. You might think that by now all my children and grandchildren have [...]

I am really pleased that I have been invited to become a "Guest Blogger". I have been interested in creating different types of art work ever since I was a child. I taught watercolour and oils here in Calgary for 20 years and then branched out into fabric painting. I have also done a number [...]

Hi, my name is Holly Elam. I live in north west Alabama. I am a stay at home mom of three rambunctious boys. Who definitely keep me on my toes. A lot of people wonder where I find the time for making quilts. I wonder sometimes too. Thankfully the baby takes naps and my husband [...]

My name is Debbie MacLeod and I live in Island Lake, Alberta, Canada. My blog shares my quilting projects and my website showcases my quilting business. I am excited to be a guest blogger – thanks, Michele, for the opportunity! I have been piecing quilts since 1990, have been machine quilting my own quilts since [...]

Hi! I am so grateful for the opportunity to share a few memories with you! I grew up in a family full of talented women. My mother is a brilliant florist- she takes a simple flower and turns it into a memory. Flowers are an important part of our lives. They were sent to our [...]

Timing (or ‘life’) often plays in our decisions. When I received this guest post invitation (Thank You Michele!), I happened to be converting my storage system for my fabric stash & offering Stash-busting pattern ideas as my free Block of the Month on my site Victoriana Quilt Designs. Collecting fabric for a stash and interest [...]

My journey, from quiltmaking to writing novels about quilters, started at the library. I’ve always been a voracious reader, so it was a natural place for me to learn about quilting. Twenty-five years ago, I checked out a book on quilt making. There were few quilting books being printed back then, and only one or [...]

Author to Turkish Delights to Appliqué, Bended Bias Appliqué and Quilted Fairie Tales. Thanks Michele for having me as Guest Blogger this month, it’s such an honor, and a warm welcome to all the bloggers out there for taking the time to read about a slightly compulsive little girl turned professional quilter by chance! As [...]

Hello everyone, my name is Jackie Kunkel and I have been quilting for about 17 years and really love every aspect of it. From the fabric shopping right down to the binding! I started because my husband encouraged me to get a hobby. The first class I took, I was a little put off. The [...]

When Michele first asked me to be a Guest Blogger on Quilting Gallery, I was extremely flattered .. then nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs .. EGADS!!! ME?!?!?!?!? I’m not anyone famous, just a person that loves to quilt, blog, learn new things, and knit. Okay, I thought about it [...]

Quilting is so personal to me. From the reason why I started quilting to the reason I quilt today, quilting is personal. In my 15 years of being the editor of Better Homes and Gardens American Patchwork & Quilting magazine, I heard lots of reasons why people started quilting and why they continue. For me, [...]

Normally, as a former English teacher, I wouldn’t write a title like that, but it seems to fit, since that’s what I wanted to write about for my guest blog. I have three blogs, you see, and some people think that’s crazy, but it works for me. While I’m a pretty creative person (okay, I’m [...]

Greetings everyone! Here is something about me and making quilts in my corner of the world. Cheers from sunny Bulgaria! It is a beautiful country with the oldest processed gold on the planet and talented people.

I am currently almost 6 months into my self-imposed challenge to go an entire year without buying any fabric. Am I crazy? Maybe a bit. But I realized that every time I bought new fabric, I tended to use it in a project. My stash, collected over years and years was going mostly unused. I [...]

Thank you Michele for allowing me to be a guest blogger! I was thrilled when I found out what day I got to blog! I thought of all of the things I could say about my love of quilting and what draws me to this wonderful hobby, I finally decided that I would share with [...]

My name is Cathy McKillip and I have been the owner of Wish Upon A Quilt for the last 9 months. After spending 20 years in the corporate world (healthcare and software development), I decided to take the plunge (I’m also a scuba diver) and follow my passion-fabric, quilting and sewing! I am excited that [...]

hey yall. i’m rachel from p.s. i quilt i’m SUPER excited to be a guest blogger on quilting gallery. {thanks michele.} let’s see…where to begin… it all started when i was 16 in home ec class. i thought that our home ec teacher was the bomb. she was young, hip, and could totally hang with [...]

I started quilting in 1993 as a way to get out of the house :) I had two little kids and was living in a new town. The guild was newly formed and had just 20 or so members. I knew nothing about quilting but I had always enjoyed sewing. I had learned to sew [...]

Quilt Historian, Researcher, Speaker and Future Art Quilt Maker Thank you Michele for inviting my personal words and thoughts for the Quilting Gallery website. I didn’t want to write the usual story about how I got started in quilting and what I like about quilting; besides it is on my website. For you I decided [...]

Angels, saints, sinners, strange beasts. Fire eye-browed women and prickly landscapes step out of the air and into my work. I can’t help it. These odd characters and scenes aren’t predetermined, they just happen. I don’t use patterns, rarely make sketches, refuse to pin, never measure (except at the very end), sometimes I don’t even [...]

“Busy hands are happy hands,” so Grandmother always said, patiently teaching me how to thread a needle, as I fumbled with the thimble. I have long since abandoned thimble-usage. My rough, calloused thumbs are proof. My grandmother’s example as she tenderly taught me, has stuck with me through the years. I am able to stick [...]

your own quilting history, how did you get started quilting My introduction to quilting was a bit like a religious experience…. Well, I’m not too sure what a religious experience is like because I’m not religious, but…. I’ve seen it in movies and "I want what she’s having" I was a fashion designer at the [...]

Greetings, Quilters! I’m so pleased to be invited to be a guest blogger (thanks, Michele!) and to connect with other quilters. I am Annie Unrein, a pattern designer and teacher who lives in St. George, Utah, and Sitka, Alaska. (Yes, I truly have the best of both worlds, as I get to enjoy the sunny [...]

Hi All! I am Shannon Menninger and I have been quilting for about 6 years now. I am not a professional nor have I written any books on quilting. I have designed one quilt myself and completed it. I sent it to my husband while he was stationed in the Middle East. I started quilting [...]

Hello from the beautiful west coast of BC, Canada! My name is Shawn and I’m pretty much a ‘newbie’ in the quilting game when compared to many of the wonderful quilters out there. My first quilt was made during my grade 12 Home Economics class, a simple 9-patch on point and the fabric was polyester [...]

In case you’ve missed any, here’s a list of all the fabulous guest bloggers for the first half of Guest Blogger Month. Meg Cox Seeks Quilters to Take a Survey, and is Giving Away Books Bonnie McCaffery Talks About Vidcasts Margaret’s Hope Chest by Carin Vogelzang Jennifer Rogers Ofenstein Quilt Historian Judy Anne Breneman Robyn [...]

Thanks, Michele, for inviting me to share some of my quilting story and thoughts. Quilting is intricately connected to my personal values of family and community. My mother and grandmothers all sewed and did needle work. They got me started on needle point, embroidery, and cross-stitching when I was a young girl, but I didn’t [...]

On this Valentine’s Day, I’d like to share with you a method that I have found works great for adding borders to a quilt. I used to hate adding borders to my quilt tops. I would tell myself that I didn’t need to do borders; that the top was fine without. But I knew better [...]

Ah, Valentine’s Day! A day for candy and cupids, hearts and flowers, dreams come true, and love that never ends. How romantic! But, wait… Is that the music of violins I hear? Or the skeptical guffaws of those who know that the road to the land of happily-ever-after is full of potholes? Well, the skeptics [...]

For my spot as a guest blogger, I thougt I’d share the story of how I began quilting. I first wrote about it when I started my blog Seven-Stitches. I had always been aware of quilting. I have memories of my mother quilting when I was a child and always saw her set of fabric [...]

THANK YOU to Michele for this opportunity and for promoting us Quilting Bloggers!!! I am Dale Anne Potter, a Mixed Media Artist specializing in textiles (fancy name for an Art Quilter). I also dabble in stamping, scrapbooking, altered arts and genealogy. I live with my retired husband, Brian, in a small town in SW Saskatchewan. [...]

Take a journey and visit Bee Sew Whimsical, a warm and friendly online store for all those that are whimsical at heart. We stock patterns for patchwork, appliqué, stitcheries, dolls, beaded jewelry, prim "needfuls" (notepads, handmade candle melts, linen sprays) and so much more is always buzzing into our hive. Owner of Bee Sew Whimsical [...]

Greetings Everyone! My name is Ebony Love, and I am the owner & artist of LoveBug Studios. I started my business about 4 years ago, and focus on custom quilts and other items. I really love trying out new techniques, one of which is my topic for today. I have also started blogging recently, which [...]

My name is Patricia Winter and I live in Indiana near the Dunes of Lake Michigan where I gather mermaid tears (sea glass) and inspiration for my work. I am a crazy quilt addict and enjoy stitching in my garden every chance I get. I have always been crafty and since childhood, I’ve collected old [...]

Thanks Michele for inviting me to be a guest blogger. I’m so glad I found your site! I’ve been quilting for three decades (and saying that makes me feel very old!) While wasting away a lunch hour one day, I came across a little quilt shop, went in and . . my world was forever [...]

Thank you Michele for including me in your guest blogger spot and I hope that people will be interested to read a little about quilting in the tropics. I am originally from England but have lived overseas for many years. For the last fourteen years I have been living in Brunei which is a tiny [...]

In 1983, I wrote my first quilting book, America’s Pictorial Quilts, on an Atari computer. It was not connected to the Internet because the Internet did not exist, and everything I wrote was saved on a cassette tape that was connected to the computer. It was a tedious process. Because of the lack of an [...]

My adventure in the world of TV started with a request from Pokey Bolton of Quilting Arts to tape a small segment for Season 3 of Quilting Arts TV. Pokey and the producers of Quilting Arts TV planned to tape right at the Make It University area of the International Quilt Festival in Chicago. Since [...]

For me, quilting has always been about connections – connecting pieces of fabric with other fabric and trying to make it perfectly square again. I’m kidding. The absurdity, however, of cutting fabric into pieces, then being upset when they aren’t square after being sewn together with a kind-of-quarter-inch seam is not lost on me. What [...]

“It’s the year of the quilt!” That phrase has rolled off my tongue time and time again for the few months. I just started quilting early last summer and have loved every stinking moment of it. Sure there are a lot of new terms I had to get used to, and sure I get nerved [...]

Hi, I am Laurie Breadmore I have been residing in Dubai for 2 yrs and have just returned to Rotorua, New Zealand. “I really don’t remember the first piece I stitched. My mother stitched doing embroidery, quilting and crochet, and she also did all manner of crafts and household stitching from whenever I could remember. [...]

As crafters, we know how fun and satisfying it is to make and give a handmade present, especially when the recipient is a child. Remembering back to our own girlhoods, some of our most cherished gifts were handmade clothes for our beloved dollies. Whether they were made by moms, grandmas, aunts, or even purchased from [...]

Michele, thanks for hosting me at Quilting Gallery for the fifth stop on my two-week blog tour! I’m Maria Peagler, award-winning quilter and author, and I’m excited to premiere my new video tutorial here and introduce my revolutionary new way of approaching color in quilting from my eighth book: Color Mastery: 10 Principles for Creating [...]

Hi, My name is Kay Sorensen. I was honored to be invited to be a guest blogger. I began blogging in September to share my quilts with more people. I don’t particularly like to write so didn’t think I’d enjoy it. I also thought you had to blog right away in the morning as that [...]

My name is Tsoniki Crazy Bull and I have a crafty blog at me being crafty. I’ve been sewing and quilting since I was a young girl – sewing when I was very young and quilting when I got older. My Grandma and Mom taught me to sew and though quilting was hard for me [...]

Thank you for this opportunity to tell you a little about myself and my endeavors. I grew up in North Carolina, went to school in Colorado, then lived in Los Angeles for a number of years. During all that time I had not one stitch of quilting heritage. I started in a beginning quilting class [...]

As a new quilter, I have been plugging away with trial and error methods and have spent countless hours with Google by my side as I try to understand the ins and outs of quilting. Whether it be terminology, methods, patterns or even basic how-to’s, I’ve been stumped time and time again. But it turns [...]

Hi everyone! I’m Anne Sutton from Bunny Hill Designs and I’m delighted to be a guest blogger for Michele! Thanks to her, we have a site where quilters can all connect. For those of you who don’t know me, my passion is appliqué and embroidery. I’m a quilt and fabric designer. I love hand work [...]

Hello Everyone. My name is Robyn and I currently live on the outskirts of Sydney Australia with my husband and son, our 2 dogs and 1 kitty cat. I’ve been sewing since I was young (I’d say about 10 years or younger – don’t know exactly). I loved going through my Mum’s big suitcase full [...]

I hadn’t given quilts much thought until I was a young adult and my mother gave me a quilt wrapped tightly in plastic. It was a variation of a nine patch quilt. She told me my great grandmother Hanna Balster had made it for me. Hanna had made one for each of her future great [...]

What a lovely opportunity to get to know more of the online quilting community! Thank you so much for the invitation, Michele. Hmm, well, where to start? My name is Jennifer Rogers Ofenstein. I’m a native Texan and have been crafting my whole life. I have a B.A. in English with an Art minor from [...]

My name is Carin Vogelzang and I am so excited and thankful to Michele for the opportunity to blog today and share a small glimpse into my quilting world. I have the privilege of being the founder and co-director of Margaret’s Hope Chest (MHC), a quilting non-profit organization based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Since April [...]

Hi Michele, Thanks so much for inviting me to be a guest blogger. I started quilting in the traditional way over 25 years ago – all by hand. I think it all starts when you become a mom – at least that’s how it was for me. I had this little baby (Heather) and I [...]