Off the Bolt
Stories, stitches, and the little wins between seams ~ pull up a chair.
Quilters Lifestyle
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Sleeves Up to Press, Sleeves Down for the Porch
A long sleeve is a quilter's most useful garment and nobody says so. Pushed up, it is out of the way of the iron and the rotary cutter. Pulled down, it is the porch on Halloween night with a bowl of candy on one side and a lap of binding on the other, waiting for the doorbell. One shirt, both jobs, from the first cold evening in October until the sewing room warms up again in spring.
Latest Articles
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The Ghosts Took the Night Shift and the Skeleton Is Still Not Done
Somewhere around the first of October, our sewing rooms change hands. The Halloween Shop is Chic Quilter's record of who moves in: skeletons who never quite finish the binding, ghosts working the late shift at the machine, a jack-o'-lantern who has claimed the whole table, and a coven piecing a quilt top faster than any guild we know. It is the quilter's Halloween, drawn with the same rotary cutters, rulers and fabric heaps that fill your sewing room all year. -
Move Over, Plastic Lawn Flamingos: These Pretty Birds Can Sew
Somewhere in every neighborhood there is a pair of pink plastic flamingos stuck in a flower bed, standing on one leg and doing absolutely nothing. We quilters respect the look. We simply think a flamingo that pretty ought to have a hobby. Stitching Pretty is our flock of flamingos who found theirs, nearly all of them with a hairdo that says Quilt Hair Don't Care, and every one with a quilting habit to match. -
Two Grand Marshals Lead the Sewing Room's Hometown Parade
Small towns do a parade right. There are lawn chairs staked out along Main Street by eight in the morning, a fire truck that toots its horn for the kids, and somewhere near the front a float wrapped in red, white and blue bunting with a quilt draped over the side. Stars, Stripes & Stitches is the float we quilters would build. It carries two American icons, both reimagined by someone who has clearly spent a lot of hours at the machine, and both wearing the same unmistakable expression: Resti
