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

1. Shawn Bailey
2. Shannon Menninger
3. Annie Unrein of Patterns by Annie
4. Pam Holland
5. Deborah (Stout) Brine
6. Susie Monday
7. Kimberly Wulfert
8. Kathleen Murphy
9. rachel griffith
10. Cathy McKillip
11. Ginny Hildreth and her Daughter, Torrie
12. Julia C. Wood
13. Ralitza Boneva from Bulgaria
14. The Many Blogs of Me
15. Heidi Kaisand
16. Grace Lambie
17. Jackie Kunkel
18. Linda M. Poole
19. Terri Thayer, Author and Quilter
20. Fabric Storage Thoughts from Benita Skinner of Victoriana Quilt Designs
21. Cary Kornegay
22. Debbie MacLeod
23. Holly Elam
24. Shirley Paterson
25. Lesley Riley
26. Sue Hauser, Alderwood Quilts
27. Elizabeth Hawkins, Lizzie B Cre8ive
28. Debbie Maddy
29. Phyllis Dobbs

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone that participated in Guest Blogger Month. Not just the blog post authors but also those that left hundreds of comments on the various posts. It has been an exciting month, and I hope everyone has enjoyed this special feature.

If you would like to be a Guest Blogger, I allow up to two a week (at my discretion). Please read the guidelines and then drop me an email to discuss.

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 designed (and most of those were evening gowns) to 5″ scrap squares that I cut out to make my first quilt.

Various forms of needlework were instilled in me from my earliest years. My grandmother (as well as her ancestors) quilted. I have several quilts passed down from my great grandparents along with the “wedding” quilts for my grandmother and grandfather. My grandmother had a quilting frame attached to her ceiling that she dropped down to quilt. My mother sewed and knitted. She knitted matching sweaters for us when I was a toddler (and I still have both of them). My aunt cross stitched, needlepointed, embroidered and crocheted. So from these fabulous women in my life, I learned the same skills as soon as I became old enough to hold a needle and I’m still holding that needle.

I’ve also tried many other crafts along the way, but always come back to that needle. I was very adept at macramé and made several pieces of my own design. I did lots of crewel because I loved the needle. I tried decoupage. I took batik classes and stained glass classes. I have to admit that I was a drop out on the stained glass – I didn’t like to see the spots of blood on my hands from the glass cuts. You have to draw the line somewhere and that was the one for me.

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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 I learned to quilt. My first quilt was a king-sized sampler cut with paper templates and hand stitched. When I discovered the rotary cutter I felt like I had been riding a horse and had bought a new car. I took every class I could and tried to soak up the knowledge of every teacher.

I soon discovered that no matter what class you are attending or what teacher is teaching, you can always learn something. I soon learned how much I enjoyed sharing my knowledge. I have been teaching quilting now for about 16 years and love every part of it.

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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 about our partnership is that we are actually related!

Now when we’re together at shows people stop and look quizzically at our nametags, scratching their heads in puzzlement. Because both name tags say the exact same thing. Elizabeth Hawkins. What the nametags DON’T say is that even the middle names “Ann” are the same. Then they try to figure out how this could be. “Are you twins?” We’ve been asked. Which is always a question that was never quite thought out….seriously, what mother would name TWO kids the exact same name?

No, not twins, we explain. Sisters-in-law. Then comes the…”Do your husbands have the same name too?” question. Ummm…the same LAST names we reply! It may sound a bit complicated, but here’s what it boils down to….we’re married to brothers and we happened to bring with us into marriage the same first and middle names.

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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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