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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?