Hi All!

I am Shannon Menninger of angelicquilts.com 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 when my sister and I walked into a great shop in Chesapeake, VA called The Quilting Bee. All the quilters there were so helpful, whether they worked there or not. It is now the shop by which I judge all others. My first class was a rail fence quilt over the course of 6 weeks. Before the 6 weeks were up my sister and I had taken at least 3 other classes. After the first class I was hooked. My sister and I finished quilts for at least 5 people by the end of that first year of quilting.

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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 Fortrel – the fabric that never dies! I still have that quilt tucked away looking just as new as when I made it.

I did more garment and drapery sewing for many years while I raised my family. It wasn’t until just a few years ago that I became interested in quilts again and decided that I wanted a hand-made quilt.

I fell in love with Hawaiian quilts while on vacation and then again with the beautiful hand-quilted works of art I saw in Nova Scotia a short time later. The price tag on these quilts made me think twice and I decided that I could make a quilt myself.

After all, I’ve made and designed clothes and drapery how hard could it be? Well, famous last words of course. After walking into a quilt store and spending a couple hundred dollars, my second quilt was a small lap quilt and I realized that perhaps those price tags weren’t so far off the mark and now that I’ve spent a few years quilting I know that those price tags didn’t include the time, experience and love that goes into them.

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In case you’ve missed any, here’s a list of all the fabulous guest bloggers for the first half of Guest Blogger Month.

1. Meg Cox Seeks Quilters to Take a Survey, and is Giving Away Books
2. Bonnie McCaffery Talks About Vidcasts
3. Margaret’s Hope Chest by Carin Vogelzang
4. Jennifer Rogers Ofenstein
5. Quilt Historian Judy Anne Breneman
6. Robyn from Australia, Hearts and Hexagons
7. Anne Sutton, Bunny Hill Designs
8. Kay Mackenzie, Appliqué Enthusiast
9. Yes, I’m a Newbie Quilter by Sharon Hanks
10. Tsoniki Crazy Bull
11. Kay Sorensen
12. Color Mastery Blog Tour
13. Free Twirl Skirts Pattern from YouCanMakeThis.com
14. Laurie Breadmore, Quilting Around the World
15. Becky Olsen
16. Eileen Casey Gianiodis
17. Lights, Camera, Action on Quilting Arts TV by Virginia Spiegel
18. Caron Mosey
19. Anne Maundrell in Brunei
20. Quilt-Along with Judy Laquidara
21. Crazy Quilter Patricia Winter
22. Incorporating Silk Flowers into Your Quilts
23. Darlene Carroll of Bee Sew Whimsical
24. Brenda Hall
25. Dale Anne Potter in SW Saskatchewan
26. Amy Williams and Seven-Stitches
27. Roses, Romance, and Sweet Revenge
28. Adding Borders to a Quilt by Deb Geyer
29. Joanna Norman and Forever Green Quilts

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 make my first quilt until 2000. I had been interested in learning to quilt, but had not taken the time to do it.

Early that year, I went to spend some time with my Mom who was having a difficult recovery from surgery. I grabbed a pattern for a quilt featuring a yellow Labrador and the fabrics I’d bought, planning to work on cutting it while I was hanging out with my mom. Two days into my visit, she had a heart attack and I spent the rest of my time on that visit with her in the hospital. A long six weeks later, she passed away and I was home again, grieving. I pulled out the quilting project and started cutting. I cried many tears for my mom making that quilt, but it allowed me the time and space to work through my loss.

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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 than that. A border can take a quilt top from great to fantastic. So I would just cut long strips of fabric and sew them onto the edges and lop off the extras. But when I would hang it up, stand back and look at it, the borders would be wavy and not square. It was very frustrating!

Since then, I have learned a method that works for me and I actually enjoy adding borders; and the more borders the better! This method determines at the beginning the length that the borders need to be to keep the quilt top square. And then it insures that the borders are sewn on correctly so they are not wavy and there is no extra fabric to cut off.

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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 have a point. In the quest for true love, even Princesses have to kiss a few frogs.

My first frog’s name was Todd. He sat at a desk two rows distant from mine in Sister Judith’s second grade classroom. He had sandy blonde hair and big blue eyes that looked even bigger when he stared through the lenses of his wire rimmed eyeglasses. For reasons that escape me now, I was sure that Todd and I were destined for one another. Todd, however, was less convinced.

One day after school, I cornered Todd in the cloakroom and presented him with a “ring” that I’d cut out of construction paper, and colored with gold crayon, before studding it with spots of glue and green glitter to simulate emeralds. (Yes, my quilting friends, I was a crafter from day one. Bet you were too.)

Naturally, I’d made another for myself and could hardly wait to see how Todd and I would look wearing the matching bands that would announce our love to the world – especially to Mary Kay Munson who would be SO jealous.

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