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 to the quilt shop.

I have been sewing since I was 12 (more than a few years ago!). I had a wonderful home economics teacher named Mrs. Jones in 7th and 8th grade in Philadelphia who taught me how exciting it was to turn fabric into clothing. How many of you remember when we had Home Economics in school? In sewing class, we made gingham aprons and matching headbands and we embroidered our names on the headbands. Then we wore the aprons and headbands when we had cooking class. Now THERE’S a memory!

I remember one fateful class when I was charged with measuring the salt and the sugar to put into the muffins. I carefully measured ¼ tsp sugar and a cup of salt and added them to the batter (instead of the other way around). I like to post recipes to my blog, and I promise they have the correct measurements for salt and sugar!

From that point on, I started making most of my own clothes. (I caught onto sewing faster than I caught onto cooking). I made my wedding gown, and tailored suits for my husband. When the children came along, there wasn’t as much time for sewing and I drifted away from it.

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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 their very own handmade quilt. Well my story is not as simple as that. I am a quilter at heart but my love of fabric has taken me on an amazing journey into art quilts and mixed media, writing, teaching, TV and DVDs. The one constant throughout is fabric.

I started out as a traditional quilter with Ruby McKim’s 101 Patchwork Patterns as my guide, but soon answered the lure of the early art quilters from the 70s, like Michael James, Beth Gutcheon, Nancy Halpern, Radka Donnell and Molly Upton. I can’t say I became an art quilter back then. I was too afraid. It took much longer for me to find my confidence and my voice.

I set aside my quilting for many years to raise a family and grow a business with my husband. The lure of fabric persisted and my stash continued to grow of course. The older I got and the longer I was away from quilting, the more I felt that there was something missing in my life. One cold January day in 1999, when an ice storm had left us without power for days, my first Fragments were created. Not knowing what to do or where to begin, I just started combining photos and quotes with scraps of fabric into collages. They were small fragments of fabric collage created in small fragments of time. I did have 6 children after all.

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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 of other ‘artsy’ things over the years – to name a few: stained glass, copper tooling, clay hand building, designing my own jewelry from copper, silver and brass – and many more crafts over the years. In 2000 I became interested in fabric painting and painted many full-sized or queen-sized quilts.

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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 is wonderful about giving me time to sew.

When I was in the 8th grade I took a home economics class. That is where I got my first taste of sewing. We had to make a pillow in the shape of a stingray (our school mascot). In the 10th grade I made an American flag pillow for a history project. However the sewing bug didn’t bite me until I was in my late twenties.

My mother in-law Judy Elam is always sewing or making something. Whenever we would visit she would show me what she was working on. Her sewing range is very vast. She has won awards at several county fairs. She passed on to me an old green White Brand sewing machine. It is the kind in a cabinet that folds out from with in. It doesn’t have a foot peddle. You have to use your knee. The first thing I made was curtains for my oldest sons room.

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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 2000, and quilting for others since 2001. My desire to machine quilt came out of not being able to hand-quilt (a skill I deeply admire), so I took a class and discovered that machine quilting was for me. I started quilting for others soon after on my Husqvarna Lily. That machine is a workhorse and has quilted close to 200 projects on it! Of course, the dynamics of quilting on a domestic sewing machine takes its toll on your back, neck and shoulders and I wanted to try a larger machine.

My chance came in 2002 when I started working at a local quilt store on their longarm, a Gamill with Statler Stitcher. I enjoyed the work but found that my creativity was just not being used with a computerized machine. I wanted to quilt my own patterns!! The answer came for me in 2005 when I purchased my HQ16. I could now be as creative as I wanted too!! I love my machine and have been quilting madly ever since.

At first, I only quilted freehand patterns – I just wanted to be free –LOL; however, it soon became apparent to me that if I was quilting for others I would need to offer pantographs – which I now do. For me, quilting is my creative expression and I often piece tops just to quilt them! Many, many times I am figuring out what I am going to quilt before I have chosen the fabrics for my next quilt!

Over the years many people have said to me, "How do you know what to quilt", "What made you chose that design – it looks great", so I thought I would write about choosing quilting designs – either for yourself as a machine quilter, or choosing designs with your longarm quilter.

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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 mothers when we were born; they are with us, clutched tight in sweaty palms, on our wedding day; our husbands send them to us as a token of their love and appreciation. Colorful, beautiful flowers…

My aunt, my mother’s sister, teaches high school Home Economics. She is a brilliant seamstress. She used to sew teeny tiny Barbie Doll clothes for me. She would use fantastic fabrics and add the most intricate detail to those tiny outfits. It was my aunt that taught me how to sew. I would visit her for several weeks each summer and one summer, when I was probably 8 or 9 years old, she and I made a patchwork teddy bear. She sat at the machine with me, for hours and days, piecing little scraps of fabric together until they took the form of a bear that would be loved to literal shreds!

My Grandma Peggy gave her love of flowers to my mother and her love of sewing to my aunt. Grandma used to sew all of my dresses – fantastic frocks with ruffles and lace. She even sewed a sling for my little broken arm to match my Easter dress…

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