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 us and our humor.
{she definitetly gets credit for my domestic goddess status. lol.}

Continue reading »

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 in middle school and continued on my own in high school. I think it’s sad that this generation won’t learn to sew (or cook) in Home Economics.

My first quilts are horrible. I made every mistake possible; my first block had drapery fabric in it (I didn’t know ~ it matched the other fabrics), my first baby quilt had double batting to be really warm and it was peach and mint all the same value so if you stepped away from it looked like one color!

My first real quilt was a radiant star I made during my first quilting vacation. Louisa Smith was my teacher that weekend; she is a great lady, quilter and teacher. This was also the first quilt I machine quilted (queen size) on my domestic sewing machine. Louisa encouraged me to enter it into the Images quilt show and it was accepted, I was so surprised.

Continue reading »

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 to let the words flow out, similar to getting into the zone when machine quilting and your mind flies free while your hands and eyes do the work.

Over the last few hundred years women from all walks of life, east coast to west coast, rich and poor, slave and master, illiterate through neuroscientist, children through elders and even some men, have been inspired to make a quilt or many quilts in their lifetime. Quilts are the great equalizer, are they not? Likewise, how many people’s lives do you know that have been touched by a quilt, including viewing them?

Continue reading »

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 worry about the back of my quilts and the knots and snarls that bedevil us all whether we admit it or pick them out or not.

Let’s get one thing straight here at the start. Many (most?) of you reading Quilting Gallery are traditional quilters. You are the backbone of the interest and the audience and most of the quilt store customers and you are skilled! From reading a number of the other guest bloggers, I suspect I am in the minority here, but I will promise to make this a good read. Maybe even challenge you to give up your perfect points in the next quilt you make. (Sorry, that was uncalled-for.)

Continue reading »

“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 it out as I wrestle with tangled thread and fabric without biting my tongue clear off or tearing my hair completely out. As my fingers work the needle, guiding the thread through the fabric, tight muscles relax, releasing the day’s or week’s tensions…cares easily roll off my shoulders. Ahh…I find quilting to be very relaxing.

I am happiest sewing by hand. I have nothing against the sewing machine. In fact, I like the speed and accuracy a sewing machine offers. Yet, there is something very satisfying about quilting by hand. It’s hard to explain. Go ahead and shout out if you know what I mean. Perhaps, one of you can put it into words better than I.

Continue reading »

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 time and I was winding down after raring 15 children and running my own fashion business for 20 years…. In fact, I needed a break.

HA, I sort of went from one thing to the next…. Even though I was a designer with a lot of fabric experience, I really had to learn the basics of quilting…. I took to it like a duck to water and many times I sank…. but I learned from my friends and I re-surfaced.

That was 20 years ago now…. Now I travel the world teaching and lecturing and having the most amazing time in quilting.

Continue reading »