From Daphne Greig, Patchworks Studio, Victoria, BC

I’ve been watching the Olympics for the past week and a half. I knew they were coming, I knew I would want TV for the whole 17 days, I knew I would have to DO something while watching. I am very lucky to live in Canada, near the host city of Vancouver; we have 3 TV channels showing wall-to-wall coverage. My thumb is getting a workout on the remote control!

So, like a good little quilter, I planned, prepared and plotted. I would have hand work projects so I would have no guilt sitting around watching TV in the middle of the day! When I travel I find a hand work project to take with me. Should be no problem, right?

Well, the first project I planned was the redwork sampler to be made for the Quilt Cruise to Alaska I am doing in September. I will be teaching the class with Cathy Miller, the Singing Quilter and she will be working on her blocks on her upcoming tour of the United States and Canada. She will be singing and teaching in California, then across the southern states, up the East Coast, into Eastern Canada, back into the US and home at the end of June! Now that’s someone who has lots of hand work prepared.

I flitted back and forth to the computer to design my floral blocks, printed out the patterns, hunted for just the right white fabric in my stash and decided which colour of embroidery floss to use.

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Thanks for including me as a guest blogger. My name is Saffron Craig I have been quilting now for about 5 years. Most of my time is spent designing fabrics. I run a small business from my home in Sydney Australia.

After my daughter was born my Dutch mother in law Daphny came to Australia and had me instantly hooked into quilting. She taught me most of the techniques to patchwork and make quilts.

In a magazine she bought I saw that Prints Charming were printing their own fabrics, which inspired me to do the same. Having been a fashion designer for 10 years previously, I just loved printing my own designs onto fabrics and sewing them into quilts and snuggling under them or giving them away for presents.

Initially I hand-cut paper screens and printed them onto white fabrics. I then thought I might be able to make a business with the fabrics. So I took my 9 best designs and had them hand-printed in yardage in different colour ways; red, blue and pink with some designs in green as well. I took them to the Sydney Craft & Quilt show where I had a lot of happy customers. Selling out in one day of some fabric.

Now I have just released my 5th range and work with retailers around the world. My designs are more colourful now though still screen-printed. The handle is soft and of a really high quality.

I try to make a quilt design out of each of my fabric ranges to show people what they can do with the fabrics. My fabrics have a dreamy, whimsical feel and are inspired by my natural surroundings. I suppose they have a modern feel and it is my wish to encourage younger people to join in the love of quilting or even to sew, or make things. I get a lot of lovely emails from people encouraging me to continue.

This is a quilt I finished this week using al the fabrics I have designed.

Owl nesting quilt kit.

Follow me on Facebook. Read my tweets on Twitter. I write a blog adding a new post once or twice a week.

Hello! In my day job, I am a machine quilter / teacher / cartoonist / beading designer, so I thought I would share a bit about quilting from a machine quilter perspective. Before I begin, let me say that 99.999% of quilting clients are wonderful people and a delight to work with. Really.

I thought I would share a few of my stories and cartoons:

Pet Free Studios are a good thing. A few years ago I was building a house, so I moved my quilting machine into my dining room temporarily during construction. One of my cats got into the house and after eyeballing the customer quilt, went instead for a huge box of quilting thread – treating it as cat litter, thus ruining a few hundred dollars worth of my beautiful new thread. Not all was lost, as it did inspire this cartoon:

Not all quilts with "Issues" can be quilted out. I still remember my very first wonky quilt that I received from a customer. Wavy borders, bias that stretched when you glanced at it, and of course, the dreaded "C" cup in the middle of several intersecting seams. I somehow survived that quilt, learned how to tame most quilts with "issues," and even got a cartoon out of the deal:

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By: Tammy Gilley

Quilts were meant for sharing.

I’ve been noodling about quilts. Women who make them. Women who need them. Quilts, especially those that are handcrafted, are really just a giant hug for anyone who wraps one around herself.

Perhaps by stitching quilts, we’re comforting ourselves, too, because the whole concept of what has happened in Haiti is overwhelming. And sending a check helped me for a day or so. Then I grew antsy. So, I stitched. And I thought.

I’d like to do a "quilt drive", for lack of a better term, and get quilts to the women, children, men (we don’t discriminate here) in Haiti. I realize the needs in Haiti are huge, and "sending blankets" may not seem like the answer. But consider this. Quilts offer comfort, solace, warmth. These beautiful people lost everything. Perhaps by sending our quilts, we are also sending our love.

I’ve been talking to my friend, Rebecca Sower. I know many of you follow her blog. Rebecca returned home from Haiti only days before the earthquake hit. I checked her blog everyday to see if there was word about the people she met, what was happening, how I could help.

When I presented the idea of sending handcrafted quilts to Haiti, she said, "I absolutely love the quilt idea! Truly, one thing they need right now is warmth and comfort."

So. Without further ado…let’s Quilt Haiti.

Rebecca is planning a trip back to Haiti later this year. She has generously offered to get our quilts to Haiti. So, let’s send her a whole big bunch of them! If you’re a quilter and like me, you have oodles of quilts in your home. Send me one of those. Or create a new one to send. Send a handmade bunny or bear. Send a baby quilt. Send a king size quilt. It’s up to you. Whatever you send will be absolutely perfect.

If you’d like to be involved, simply leave a comment on my blog. Please be sure to include your email address, so I can contact you with the details.

I am so excited about this! And I hope you are, too. There are blog buttons available on my blog (thanks to my pal Monica Solorio-Snow for giving of her creative and technical talents). Don’t be shy, spread the word. What the world needs now, is quilts, love, and more quilts. And more love.

Send quilts. Send love. Pass it on.

Hi, I’m Barbara Wilson from the Thimble Pleasures (Chapel Hill, NC) blog "Hot Flashes". It’s great to be a Guest Blogger! Our shop’s blog gets lots of comments on anything to do with quilt studio design and organization. So, I thought I would share some of our ideas with you!

After years of quilting on the kitchen table and having to clean up every night, I had studio envy! So, I took the plunge and decided to convert a bedroom into a quilting studio. It’s not a large space and I quickly realized that I needed a plan to be certain I could do all my quilting in one room and stay within my budget. I read books about studio organization and visited friends’ studios to learn more.

This was my initial wish list for my studio:

• A design wall
• A sewing table with extension table to support my quilts
• A cutting table
• Project and fabric storage

Design Wall: The design wall was a challenge. I didn’t want to damage the walls by gluing foam insulation board to the wall, so I hung quilt batting from quilt clips – and Voila! A great design wall! I glued the batting to a small piece of wood and attached it to the wall with quilt clips. When I need the room to look really nice for guests, I just take the batting down and put a quilt in its place!

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Hi – I am Mary Anne Ciccotelli and I live in Pelham New York (20 miles north of New York City). I was born and raised in a small Idaho farming community. I became a "true" quilter in 2000. At that time when people would ask me how long I had been quilting I would get really nervous and not know exactly how to answer this question. Then I realized that I could not remember when I started quilting because I cannot remember when quilting had not been a part of my life. In fact, this past summer we celebrate my 50 1/2 Birthday by hanging a lot of my quilts and while preparing for this big event I discovered that I had made at least one quilt in each of the decades of my life.

I am privileged to have six generations of quilts in my home. I love sharing my quilting legacy story. Check here for a brochure. [PDF file]

Here is a little about the quilters in my quilting legacy:

1st Generation – My Grandma

The oldest quilt or piece of a quilt I have is this framed piece of a Double Wedding Ring quilt made by my great-grandmother for my mother as a wedding gift. My mother was storing her quilt on the top shelf of her closet. The closet had a ceiling light and the quilt got pushed up against the bulb and started to burn and turned into a swiss cheese double wedding quilt. When my niece was a teenager, she took what was left of this quilt and had pieces of it framed for each of my family members. I am kind of glad that this happened, because I am the youngest of three girls and I would have never been in line to inherit this quilt.

2nd Generation – My Grandma

Each granddaughter had a quilt in her trousseau made by my Grandma. This is the quilt that she made for me. What I really remember about my Grandma is the stale cookies that she always had in her cookie jar. I am so thankful that I have this quilt as a tangible memory of her and her workmanship.

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