blog nostalgia

uncharacteristically, i did not bring books along for reading for our beach stay. so for the times i want to read a little rather than stitch and listen, i have started rereading old blog posts. i've begun with jolene klassen's blue elephant stitches blog, going back to the very beginning of the archives. it's been really fun and full of nostalgia for the golden age of blogging in the early 2010's.

my quilting has always been connected to social media. when i first began quilt blogging in 2011, i had been quilting for about 4 months and was already keeping a private family blog. when the fabric and sewing projects started taking over the family blog, i knew it was time to start a quilt blog. so i don't know quilting without the interactive online element. for a few years it was blogging. i loved those blogging days! the blogging about my sewing and interacting with other quilters online were just as much a part of the fun as the quilting itself was. when most of my friends stopped blogging and moved on to instagram, i reluctantly added that platform to the mix, believing i would mostly continue blogging. but the convenience and quickness of instagram won out over time. in reverse order there i had to break off a family personal account (and then a cooking account) to keep my page topic streamlined and so my family could see family posts without all the sewing mixed in.

over the past year or so, i've returned to blogging more and more. there are still some blogs going! jolene is one of the few bigger blogs i once followed that's still active. i'm slowly finding a new collection of small blogs, too, that are still at it. i periodically visit the blogs of commenters to see what others are up to, but i'm not a regular blog reader. i don't put nearly the time into it i once did. it seems to me those of us blogging now are of a certain age and stage in life. it's not the young moms or those in the busy middle stage, it's those of us with older kids or empty nests who have more time for blogging.

to supplement my musings, i'll include photos of the two quilts i purchased from jolene. this first one is a nine patch and snowball star quilt.

in the past year, jolene has published two quilt books, which i also brought with me to read, but while perusing them,i had the urge to look at her old posts, too. i've gotten over a 3rd the way through so far. when i finish with BES, i think i'll go reread some of the other old blogs i loved back in the day. sadly, many of them have been taken down and aren't even available any more. plenty of them have been inactive for years but some, at least, are still there.

a word about this quilt (that i think of as a rainbow star quilt rather than a snowball quilt) - why would a quilter buy someone else's quilt? well, for one thing, i love jolene's work. it's very special to me to have one of her quilts. the reason i bought this one in particular is kinda funny. in nov 2023 i was looking around the family room and realized i didn't have but one or two quilts out. i like to rotate the quilts seasonally with my throw pillows and turns out once i put the fall quilts away, i didn't have any winter-y ones to put out. we were in a very busy family life season so i decided to buy a winter quilt or two. i was disappointed to find that everyone had pretty much sold off their chritamas quilts already. this one seemed neutral enough to stay out in any season, so i bought it. jolene made this quilt at the same time she made a lot of the quilts in her first book and i love seeing many of the same vintage fabrics she used in the book quilts in this quilt.

 

so this was going to be more about jolene's blog and my thoughts on blogging, but i feel like i have to talk about these quilts, too. in a minute!

one thing i have really enjoyed about rereading jolene's old posts is seeing how her style has evolved and changed a little. she's a fabric nerd as much as i am, so she talks about the individual prints and new-at-the-time fabric lines. it's so fun to hear them mentioned again and remember the excitement of when i knew what was coming out and waited anxiously for all the releases. that frenzy also spurred on a whole lot of over-purchasing, which i'm glad has slowed down for me. 

reading her thoughts on the current state of the blogging world (at the time) is interesting, too. it reflects a lot of what i was feeling - the wanting to be involved a lot and to keep up with all the exciting new ideas and developments, but needing to tend to a family and real life as well. admittedly, it was a lot. jolene unintentionally teases the reader by saying she's been thinking a whole lot about things she'd like to say but she's either lost interest, doesn't have the time, or doesn't feel like she can express the ideas adequately. i'm always like, "no! you do a much better job than you think expressing your ideas and they are so relatable. please! tell me what you were going to say!" haha. reading her posts has also clarified for me the topics and types of posts i like to read.

one idea jolene expresses a few times is that she doesn't love every single quilt she makes. she says she probably loves one out of ten, likes the rest well enough, and doesn't like one on occasion. i found this so refreshing! jolene sells most of her quilts, which i've never done, but it's interesting to hear her feelings about how some of her ideas and experiments work out or don't, and that's okay. we don't have to be in love with every single quilt we make.

personally, i think that even if i don't love each of my makes, it's highly likely that someone else in my family will or someone down the line will.

 

here's a quilt i do really love. i bought this kaleidoscope quilt from jolene in 2019. it was a birthday present to myself. i'd had my eyes on her quilts for a while with the intention of purchasing one when this came up. i really admire kaleidoscope quilts a lot but have felt they are still a bit out of my skill set, so i loved the pattern of this. i also really liked the colors and many of the fabrics in this one. the thing that sealed the deal and made this a must-have quilt was the back.

jolene used this vintage holly hobbie sheet for the backing. the reason this sold me on the quilt is that i had these exact same sheets as a little girl. mine disappeared long ago, but here was the identical one on a pretty quilt. i snatched it right up. it feels like having a piece of my childhood again. priceless.

so that's some jumbled thoughts on blogging and me fan-girling on jolene's great quilts, books, and blog. when i've gotten all the way through the BES archives, i think i'll go reread rachel's stitched in color and maybe rita's red pepper quilts. the other blog i regularly reread? my own! not all of it all the time, but some of it periodically. that's true blog nostaglia.

anyone have any favorite old blogs they still love? or wish were still going?

quiltcon 2025

d5 and i went to quiltcon in phoenix for a day. short trip, in and out, so much packed in! the quilts were, of course, mindblowing and so inspirational. i did a photo dump of them on IG if you need to see more photos of quiltcon quilts. what made this day so special for us was the people! we had some really fantastic interactions with quilters and designers there that were almost overwhelming. we left so happy.

my first priority was to meet up with my long-time online quilt buddy from the early heyday of blogging circa 2013, michelle bartholomew. (this post! this is from when we first met online. i'm in the comments. so are sarah schraw and nicole/snips! oh, i miss the old blog days.) michelle is so talented. i've loved her quilts and her quilt photography for over a decade. we were actually going to room together at quiltcon 2017 in savannah, but my husband had a little accident and that went out the window. this year we were both at quiltcon and finally got to meet in person! turns out we're kind of hair twins, with similar (all-natural) coloring and highlights. 

michelle was busy in the morning helping a friend do book promotion, so we met midday for lunch. the easiest place to find each other - at her award winning quilt! i told you she was talented. we went to the convention center food court for lunch because it was convenient and i didn't remember the food from the last quiltcon, which seemed to mean it was at least okay. michelle and i picked a stirfry shop and got in line. as we approached the counter, i notice AMH was a few people behind us. wow. not a place to fangirl, so we didn't say hello.

we ate our lunch, which was not good at all, and talked, which was great. d5 was patient with me while we chatted, but eventually we all needed to move on. there were a bazillion more things i could have talked to michelle about. next time! and next time we will eat at a real restaurant.

while d5 and i were perusing quilts before lunch, i happened apon this cutie. i've followed amy smart "diary of a quilter" for a long time but somehow i did not expect her to be so darling. she was just the nicest, so friendly and engaging. we talked like we were old friends and she talked to d5, too. i was completely smitten with what a lovely person she is. i had no reason to expect otherwise, but it made me so happy to hit it off with her this way. i think i should have given her my bag - it matches her cute pants.

after lunch with michelle, we did the vendor booth side.

d5 tried out a longarm machine. no room for that around here, but it was a fun experience for her.

i met meghan of "then came june." her booth had so many adorable bundles and it was really fun to see so many of her quilts in person. d5 wasn't around so i didn't get a photo.

i also loved the "low and behold stitchery" booth. the eye candy!! i decided it was time to make a few purchases. i got an adorable retro fabric backing and yellow bundle. d5 picked some quilt stickers for herself. when we got to the register, my credit card didn't work. i had misplaced my backup card (in a clothing pocket) earlier in the week and only had the one card on me. i had to make a phone call and it turned out there was a security freeze on the card. good thing we got in the show and paid for our lunches before that started! i got them to unfreeze the card while i made my one purchase and then put it back on hold. darn. that was the end of my shopping for the day. i can get everything else i wanted online anyway, but it would have been nice to take it home right away and not pay shipping.

i did not pay any attention to who was going to be at quiltcon beyond michelle. so i was really surprised and delighted when i happened apon several designers i admire. first up was heather bailey.

this picture cracks me up - my face! hahaha. d5 took several photos for us, but this is, unfortunately, the best one. i think i was trying to get daughter to stop taking photos with a look, but instead i look like a maniac. in reality, it does kind of show how ecstatic i was to meet and talk to heather in person. she is my favorite designer! i'm so happy she is designing again. we got to talking and we have a couple of mutual connections. like, my seester went to art school with her and is good friends with her sister. i think this means heather and i should be good friends, too.

d5 fell head-over-heels for linsey's "pen and paper patterns" quilt designs in another booth. maybe when her skills get a little better she'll be ready to tackle something that complex.

we walked around another corner, i saw denyse schmidt in her booth, and my jaw dropped. we perused the booth a little and d5 told me i had to talk to denyse. i wasn't buying anything (stupid security block on my card), so i didn't want to take her time. but the daughter made me.

the colors in this "snake trails" sample quilt were so good! i may need to make one. or at least borrow the fabric palette.

we waited in line a minute and got to talk to denyse. (only one photo and she has her eyes closed - sorry denyse!) she was very gracious and nice to converse with; such a gentle, beautiful soul so full of creativity. i'm glad i listened to d5 and talked to her.

at this point, we were near the end of the vendor booths. our feet were tired. we were a little overwhelmed with all the sensory overload of quilts and fabric. i was giddy with the people we'd met. one more row to go and we would be done.

on the very far side, last row (or very beginning, depending on where you start from), i saw heather ross. it felt like too much for one day! i was so happy with my encounters with heather bailey and denyse schmidt. heather ross on top of that felt like a little too much. but again, d5 insisted we speak to her.

this turned out to be probably the best part of the whole day.

d5 recognized some of the fabric designs in the booth and was excited herself to talk to heather. she approached the first lady in the booth and started gushing about how much she loved her work. it was heather's assistant, haha. but she was really kind and talked to us for a bit until heather was available.

then we had the pleasantest experience of the day. despite there being a line of people behind us, heather gave us all the time in the world. and we weren't even buying anything. d5 is about the same age as heather's daughter, bea, and heather took a real shine to her. heather mentioned how bea and her friends will hang out in her studio sometimes and create things there. i said to d5, "can you imagine having a mother like this?" you know, an uber talented artist with tons of fabric lines under her belt and an amazing art/quilt sudio. d5 responds, "i do have a mother like that!" she melted all our hearts.

heather then asked us if we could take a picture together. i wasn't going to ask because of the line, but it was her idea. she suggested we do it in front of the strawberry print wall. great choice.

then she asked d5 if she could give her some fabric. uh, yes please!!

they spent a few minutes combing over the bundle options heather was offering d5.

and they kept conversing. 

you want to win a mother's heart, do something for her child. this was no sales gimmick, but i am for sure a hard and fast heather ross fabric fan now.

it's a good thing this was the end of the vendor booths because there's nothing that would top this meeting of heather ross! we walked out of the convention center stunned by heather's generosity, not just of the fabric, but of her time and attention she lavished on us. we were on cloud nine.

last encounter later on was at the phoenix airport. i found kate "quarter mile quilts" on display in terminal 4. somehow i had missed her posts that her quilted family portraits would be there, but i immediately recognized them. nice work, kate!

 

gypsy wife quilt - nicole calver's handquilted AMH version

i've got one more gypsy wife veteran who's sharing her completed quilt and thoughts with us today. Two things stand out to me about nicole calver's version of the gypsy wife: her brilliant use of all AMH (anna maria horner) fabrics, and her intricate handquilting. nicole's version is so brilliantly executed, it won her a spot in the sewvivor 2014 competition, season 3; which she just happened to win! amidst the crazy of sick kids, meg birthday party prep, and winter storms, nicole managed to take some new snowy photos of her quilt to share with us, and spent some time giving us some thoughtful answers to my questions about her gypsy experience.

what attracted you to the gypsy wife quilt or why did you make one?

The chaos. I love that it has a feeling of chaos, but an organized chaos if that makes sense!

I've never been a fan of samplers, but the combination of the repeating filler blocks and the stripes to tie everything together really made me rethink sampler quilts :)

how long did it take you to complete?

Hahaha! Complete!! I'm still not finished!

Instagram says that I started about 105 weeks ago and finished almost 8 weeks later so almost two months from start to finished quilt top.

The decision to hand quilt the whole thing has added quite a bit more time onto my finish date ;)

how did you go about making fabric selections?

Since this was going to be a quilt for me to keep, of course I went with Anna Maria Horner for the bulk of my fabrics. 

Mostly Field Study and Dowry, with a bit of Hand Drawn Garden mixed in as well. I also went with Carolyn Friedlander for most of the low vol prints.

I would start by choosing one key piece of fabric for the block I was working on and let the colours in that piece decide what other fabrics were going to make the cut. Pulling fabrics for a project has always been my favourite part of the process, so being able to make mini stacks for each individual block was so much fun for me! 

what was your favorite block to make or favorite part of the project?

I don't think I could ever pick just one favourite block, but Crazy Anne is high on the list! I love that block! 

As for my favourite part of the project, definitely choosing the fabrics for each block! Though I didn't think I would enjoy the hand quilting as much as I have!

please explain your quilting choices:

Before my Gypsy Wife I had never hand quilted before but had always wanted to. So with this quilt staying with me I thought it was the perfect chance for me to try my hand at it and not need to worry about how badly it turned out! And much to my surprise I wasn't nearly as bad at it as I thought Ii was going to be, haha! 

My stitches aren't remotely even and I still have a lot to learn, but I think all the mistakes and oddities are what helps add to the charm of a handmade item. (or at least that's what I'm telling myself!)

I love the look of chunkier thread and big stitches but also wanted to use my signature Brass Aurifil so I went with a 12wt and I've loved quilting with it! 

I'd say I'm about 65 -75% finished the hand quilting and hope to be done before this time next year, but I make no promises! And in my defense, I'm not so much hand quilting as I am embroidering. Some of those AMH prints were just begging for a fancier stitch ;)

what would you change or do differently if you could?

I don't think there's anything I would change. While making it I questioned some of my blocks and ended up remaking two of them, but overall, now that they're all together, they work. And the little things that bothered me with the blocks alone are no longer visible to me.

As for doing things differently, now that I have EQ7 there's a few blocks that I think I would have rather paper pieced, haha!

what advice or tips would you offer for others making this quilt?

Spend the time now, before starting, to make notes in your pattern book. Number your strips, It will help so much later! Use the resources that others have made available for this pattern. My copy came with quite a few mistakes so I made sure to correct those all before starting. 

When I started my Gypsy someone out there had a spreadsheet for all the blocks that I found super helpful. (clumsy kristel at the blog, work-in-progress girl.) I can't think of who it was but the printout was basically a list of all the blocks, where they end up in the quilt, sizes, etc... It was nice to be able to refer back to it when I needed as well as being a checklist of sorts for the blocks I had finished and still needed to finish. 

Most of all, don't stress over it. Seriously. 

There's so much going on in this quilt that no one will notice those two points that didn't line up, or the two fabrics that ended up side by side (i'm guilty of this and when I first realized that the two prints were going to be beside each other I wanted to remake one of the blocks. I didn't, and now I don't even remember where the two of them are!) Just have fun!

:) Nicole

wow, nicole! i am still so impressed with this version of the gyspy wife quilt. it's just simply beautiful. a few other ladies out there have also been working on AMH gypsies. the two ladies just seem to go together. still, there's enough AMH fabric out there to choose from, so yours need not look like another's. (see ashley's at wasn't quilt in a day.)

and i'm so blown away by nicole's handquilting/embroidery. if i remember correctly, she first did some stitch-in-the-ditch to keep everything basted in place, which has allowed her to take her time with the handquilting and still use the quilt. i like that idea very much. in fact, that's my plan for my own quilt.

you can check out nicole's numerous tutorials and published projects on her blog, snip's snippets, on instagram @snippets101, and even on the cover and inside of several issues of love patchwork and quilting magazine.

gypsy wife quilt - elisabeth woo's value study version

here's another unique look at the gypsy wife pattern. elisabeth woo, of robert kauffman fabrics, has created an energetic and fun take on the gypsy wife by playing down the strips in low-volumes and highlighting the blocks in a bright and bold color palette, with some really cute fussy cutting, to boot.

what attracted you to the gypsy wife quilt or why did you make one?

When I saw Catherine Mosely’s (@cathmosely) version of the quilt hanging at QuiltCon in 2015 with black and white strips and super saturated colors it was the first time I could visualize the quilt in my head! I fell in love with the idea of a background that would fade and leave the focus on all the blocks!

how long did it take you to complete?

I like to work on several projects at the same time, so I move a little slower. It took me 18 weeks of on/off focus from when I pieced the first block to when I finished the top.

how did you go about making fabric selections?

I selected my limited color palette (I like blue and oranges together), then just stuck to it and started sewing.

Crazy Ann block, lower left, and some others

what was your favorite block to make or favorite part of the project?

I think Crazy Anne was my favorite block, but I also really enjoyed making all the filler blocks. J

please explain your quilting choices

I was really stumped with what to do with this quilt once it was finished. I loved all the pieces but was having a hard time feeling connected to it, so I asked one of my good friends, Valori Wells (@valoriwells) if she would quilt it for me. I love her artistic quilting style and I feel like I’m looking at a page in her sketchbook. Seeing her doodles on it really made me love it.

puss in the corner block - with pugs!

what would you change or do differently if you could?

It was really challenging piecing stripes in the background (using Kona Snow + Kona White), but they end up looking very similar and you can hardly see the subtle stripe. I think next time I would try using two colors with a bit more difference so you can see the background striping a little easier (like Kona White and Oyster).

what advice or tips would you offer for others making this quilt?

Keep track of all those filler blocks!! J I actually accidentally made more than I needed to because I wasn’t counting that carefully. 

 thank you, elisabeth, for sharing your photos and ideas with us! to see more of elisabeth's work (like her killer farmer's wife sampler quilt) and a bit about life around robert kauffman fabrics, visit elisabeth on instagram @elisabew.

i have one or two more examples of the gypsy wife quilt that might still make a showing. in the meantime, look for the big kick off post for our gypsy wife quilt along coming on saturday, january 30th, and the first post about section one on monday, february 1st.

who's ready to get gypsy-ing?!

 as soon as my sewing room is finished, i'm in.
hurry up, construction fellas!

becky's disappearing four patch

well, it's friday and i've neither a finish to share nor did i have a friday sewing social with becky. i haven't settled in from summer enough just yet to start those up again. of course, becky's also pretty pregnant with her 6th son, so if we don't have one soon, we might not have any for a while. however, the other day i was organizing my sewing photos and came across these photos of a disappearing 4 patch block that becky was working on for her cousin's baby and thought i'd share them as a sentimental moment of nostalgia for those bygone sewing socials.

becky, who has only boys so far, had a few girly charm squares laying around that she'd had no occasion to use just yet. they were leftover from several charm packs that she'd already taken the "boy" squares out of for other projects. she paired them with some white charm square to make four patches, then cut 1" on either side of each seam.

 then she flipped the center pieced portions around and sewed them back together.

voila! simple, clean, and cute. and nearly as fantastic as becky's amazing smile.

here's a photo i stole off her instagram page of the finished baby quilt. just darling. nice work, becky!

a master's touch

 maybe you remember these quilt blocks i made several week ago to learn a few techniques during the online  ::angled:: class from rachel hauser at stiched in color? they were sent in to rachel so she could make a quilt to donate to a charity. originally, rachel was going to make one baby quilt from each style block if she got enough submissions. however, when i emailed her that i'd sent my blocks she said she hadn't got enough of each for individual quilts so she was probably going to combine some of them, maybe even put them all together in one big quilt. i'll have to admit that when she told me this, i was highly skeptical that would work at all based on the block assortment i had sent her alone. i could not see how my blocks would work together, much less how she could mix in whatever else she received.

but that's why rachel is a quilt master and teacher, and i'm not. just look what she did:

all photos courtesy of rachel hauser at stitched in color

 i absolutely adore this quilt! it has a homey, vintage feel - like maybe it was found in someone's grandma's attic or buried in a chest of heirlooms somewhere. at the same time, it has a very modern aesthetic to it, too. i think putting together such a wide assortment of blocks from several quilters lends to the scrappy, make-do vintage feel it has, as well as the black-and-white ticking stripe sashing she used.  some of the block styles, the colors, and various fabrics give it it's modern side. i'm posivitely stunned by what she made out of these blocks. never in a million years could i have dreamed this up. rachel is simply magic.

 i can see my two wonky star blocks and four butterfly blocks in this photo. play a little "eye spy" if you want to find them. here's a hint: none of them are touching each other but they are either lined up or in the same position as their mates.

 the envelope blocks, which i might have been the only person besides rachel to make, went on the back of the quilt, which is a softer, sweeter layout than the bold front. but it still has plenty of color and punch to it!

i really love how she threw in the typewriter block among all the envelopes. that coupled with a text print she put in the lower left corner turns the back into a writing themed spread. i like to think of them as notes of love and encouragement to the recipient of this quilt from those who contributed to it's making. it's so fun how both sides of this quilt have a strong and unique personality. because there were so many blocks put together, this turned into a generous throw sized quilt that will be going to a women's shelter. i hope the mother who gets this feels wrapped in the love of ladies who cared enough about her and her situation to make something warm and comforting even though they didn't know her personally. the whole time i was working on these blocks i thought of how they would be for someone in need and although i didn't know who they were, their story or situation, i knew they needed love and that God knew who they were even if i didn't. He'd see the quilt got to the right place. my part was just to make pieces of it and send them out.

again, i am so grateful to rachel for not only offering an excellent class but for giving the students a chance to put their budding skills to good use to bless the life of someone who could use a quilt.