MakingOver Quilts

I recently joined a quilting blog and noticed something fascinating. Many people just starting out feel the need to apologize for not knowing what they are doing. They ask for tips on finding the experts and quilting the "right way." The more experienced quilters tend to fall into one of two camps. Camp Watch YouTube eagerly gives recommendations on blogs to follow, YouTube channels to view, and people who are leaders in the field. These people generously share the wisdom they've accumulated as consumers and producers of quilting knowledge. Camp Just Do It, on the other hand, urges the newcomers to just jump in and try things. Break the rules, ignore the "right way," learn through trial and error. I belong to this camp. This is partly because I learn everything through doing and would rather figure things out alone than ever ask for help. It's also likely a product of how I learned to quilt and how that history has informed what I now think of as my artisti

I love my day job. I am a college professor, which means I spend most days reading, writing, and talking to young people about the ideas that most inspire me. The hours are long and the mental effort is significant, but I also have a great deal of autonomy and flexibility. There is one thing I don't love about my day job. In academia, there is often an expectation that your research and teaching should be your only life. Many academics have started to bring attention to this issue as it pertains to family life. Academics with small children, especially women who are expected to take on a disproportionate amount of child-rearing and house-running, are often judged as not being serious enough about their work when they try to balance work with family life. These attitudes are pervasive and ultimately harm us all. I don't have (human) children, but I still feel the pressure to make my academic life the most important thing in my world. For many years, this meant that I d

I started teaching 4th graders to sew last fall. I volunteer with Girls Inc. of Central Alabama  and they gave me free rein to design an after-school program however I wanted. I was thrilled, so I immediately wrote up the first three lesson plans. It was clear within the first ten minutes of the first class that my lesson plans were totally wrong. Having worked at a pre-school for several years, I knew I had to adapt. From that point forward, I tried to let them direct our lessons. This is what I learned in the process. 1. I had planned to open with a lesson on how the same fabrics can be put together in many different ways. It was a simple lesson on design, but also creativity, tolerance, and individuality. In my mind, it was deep and important. Honestly, they could not have cared less! They wanted to immediately jump on the sewing machines and learn the mechanics. I ditched the introspection and walked them through the machine parts and the threading process at least 50 times i

People often ask for my advice about the best kind of quilting - "Should I go with hand quilting or is machine quilting just as good?" The truth is that there are real advantages and disadvantages to both. Hand quilting is the traditional style of quilting and I prefer it for my own quilts. I love the way it looks on both sides of the quilt and it reminds me of my grandma, who taught me to sew. Hand quilting will make your quilt durable and soft. It can also make the pattern pop out or add contrasting shapes for more visual interest. Here is a picture of a baby quilt I recently hand quilted. The biggest challenge with hand quilting is that it takes a lot of time, which means that custom quilts with hand quilting are more expensive than those with machine quilting. For example, in my shop, baby quilts with hand quilting typically range from $135-$165, while baby quilts with machine quilting typically range $95-$125. The price difference is even more pronounced when loo