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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For my spot as a guest blogger, I thougt I’d share the story of how I began quilting. I first wrote about it when I started my blog Seven-Stitches.

I had always been aware of quilting. I have memories of my mother quilting when I was a child and always saw her set of fabric drawers as an infinite source of colours and textures. I had even dabbled in a quilted cushion at the age of 13 (to this day incomplete and lost) and hand quilting an abandoned quilt of my Mother’s. While journeys never really begin or even end I guess, the most suitable starting place is the first quilt I started and finished.

My first quilt was started and completed in 2003. I had always wanted to try quilting. For months I had been eyeing up the quilt store at my bus stop and in July 2003, I finally enrolled in a beginner’s class.

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THANK YOU to Michele for this opportunity and for promoting us Quilting Bloggers!!!

I am Dale Anne Potter, a Mixed Media Artist specializing in textiles (fancy name for an Art Quilter). I also dabble in stamping, scrapbooking, altered arts and genealogy. I live with my retired husband, Brian, in a small town in SW Saskatchewan.

I started quilting in the fall of 1984, when we found out we were going to be grandparents for the first time and even tho I was a step-grandmother, I still wanted any grandchild of mine to have a QUILT.

I went to the library, checked out a couple of books and there were very few to pick from those days. I made a few pillow tops at first – all by hand, then I designed a teddy bear for the upcoming baby’s quilt. I didn’t have very much of a choice for cotton fabrics either, so the 3 colours of fabrics I used were a cotton/poly blend.

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