A Sticky Subject

(Submitted by Marje Rhine, pattern editor for American Quilter magazine)
When I recently needed a project for a car trip, I pulled out a small kit for an English paper-pieced Grandmother’s Flower Garden block. I remembered Rachel Wetzler’s article “Portable Pastime” in the May 2009 issue of American Quilter magazine on preparing just such a project. Rachel recommends printing the templates on freezer paper, then pressing the shiny side to the wrong side of the fabric before basting around the templates. But there was no time for that—I already had lightweight cardboard templates, and my husband was in the car and ready to go. So I grabbed my re-stickable glue stick and was out the door.


The glue stick worked great. Re-stickable (sometimes call removeable or repositionable) glue stick makes any piece of paper stick like a Post-it® note. It holds the paper in place but is easy to remove without leaving sticky residue. I like the Scotch® brand but Avery® and Elmer's® make comparable products. Rather than pin the templates to the fabric, I applied a light coat of the re-stickable glue stick to the back of the template. I let it dry about a minute, then finger pressed it onto my fabric. It held firmly while I basted around the template. When it was time to remove the template it came out easily and the template could be reused.


Restickable glue stick has become an important tool for my quilting. I have used it for years to hold the first patch to the foundation when foundation piecing. I also apply it to the back of plastic templates to hold them in place on fabric while I draw or cut around.


If you decide to give this a try, make sure you are using re-stickable (or removeable or repositionable) glue stick, and apply it to the template or paper—NOT the fabric.

Vivacious Curvy Quilts

Every once in a while a newly-published book makes me sit up and take notice for one reason or another. Dianne Hire’s Vivacious Curvy Quilts is one of those books. The colorful cover gives you a sense of what you are about to discover in the pages that follow: Template-free ways to cut, sew, and combine curvy pieced blocks into dynamic and creative quilts. Lots of clear illustrations and dozens of visually-interesting original quilts accompany Dianne’s well-written text. This is truly a playtime book, one that gives you the technical and design tools to venture successfully into quilt innovation. Dianne has graciously given me permission to share some of her quilt images and book ideas here.

Most of the blocks begin with a stack of 4 to 6 compatible fabrics cut into squares which are then rotary cut in a variety of gentle curves. For those with no curved-piecing experience, Dianne recommends starting with a gentle “continuous curve” cut (shown in the first-from-left block  in the top row of the quilt above). Vessel-shaped or chalice “curvies” start with a rectangle instead of a square, elongating your block designs. Corner curvies, below, are another variation.

Dianne’s quilt Curvaceous Squares, shown at the top of this posting, illustrates three different types of curvies: continuous, circular, and corner. Here are four different configurations for side-to-one-corner curvies:

 In Rain Clouds, shown below, Dianne experimented with larger rectangles and quickly put together this lovely wallhanging in under just three hours.

A final chapter in the book is devoted to bindings and edge finishing, including details on how to finish a curvy quilt with “stick-outs,” like Saffron, shown below.

If you love traditional geometric quilt designs but are ready to venture into more contemporary and original quilts, you will no doubt enjoy this book. AQS members receive a discount on this and other books ordered through our website, http://www.americanquilter.com/.

Where in the world...

Is it Shanghai? Singapore? Beijing? Yokohama? No, this lovely Asian garden is on the east bank of the Des Moines River! It’s just a short walk across a pedestrian bridge from the Iowa Events Center, where the third annual AQS Des Moines Quilt Show & Contest wraps up today, and it’s just one of the many pleasant surprises an out-of-towner can experience in Iowa’s largest city.

The Robert D. Ray Asian Gardens and Character Garden were opened last year on a site provided by the city of Des Moines. The gardens are the first phase of the Chinese Cultural Center of America Riverfront Project, designed to highlight the importance of diversity and acknowledge the significant contributions that Asian Americans have made to Iowa. The picturesque Asian pavilion sits atop an undulating bridge, spanning a pond that cascades into the Des Moines River with a series of waterfalls. Strolling by the stone pagodas, lanterns, and sculptural rock formations, you are spiritually and visually transported to a Far Eastern paradise.

The Character Garden features six large granite boulders arranged in a circle, each carved with Chinese characters representing responsibility, citizenship, fairness, respect, caring, and trustworthiness. The boulders symbolize and celebrate the six enduring moral values that transcend time, nationality, and culture.

Back to quilts: The AQS Des Moines Quilt Show & Contest closes today at 5 P.M. Congratulations to best-of-show winner Lisa Calle of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, for her quilt Hula Hibiscus. You can see photos of this beauty and all the other award-winning quilts at http://americanquilter.com/. If you couldn’t make it to Des Moines this year, it’s not too early to plan ahead. Next year’s AQS show will take place Sept. 28 – Oct. 1, 2011.

Santa Fe Quilts

What does a quilt magazine editor/certified quilt judge do on vacation? Participate in quilt-related activities, of course! I was invited by the Northern New Mexico Quilt Guild to judge their every-two-years Quilt Fiesta in Santa Fe, an invitation I accepted with pleasure. And what a wonderful show it will be! The talent runs deep in this group, from lovely hand stitching to exquisite machine quilting to wildly imaginative narrative and innovative designs and techniques — eye candy for anyone who appreciates textile arts.

As in most groups, there is a corps of dedicated volunteers organizing this show, including guild president and show chair Lynne Horpedahl, shown above with her quilt entry named Our House. The show runs from Oct. 1-3 at the Santa Fe County Fairgrounds, and you can find more details at http://www.nnmqg.org/. If you happen to be in the Santa Fe or Albuquerque area later this week, don’t miss this great show.

And if the quilt show, art galleries, folk art museum, and fabulous food weren’t enough to draw you to Santa Fe, you won't want to miss Santa Fe Quilting, 3018-A Cielo Court. This is truly one of the most well-stocked, diverse, and colorful shops I have ever explored – and I’ve seen more than a few in my time. Whether your quilt preferences are contemporary, traditional, or somewhere in between, you’ll find fabric, thread, patterns, embellishments, kits, and an abundance of beautiful finished quilts on display. Owner Mary McCusker (photo below) and her staff are knowledgeable and helpful.

The judging is over for this show, but the quilt fun continues. I’m getting on another plane tomorrow en route to Charlotte, North Carolina. My horoscope (I'm a Capricorn) predicts more quilts and fabric in my immediate future…

Aligning sashed rows

(Submitted by Marje Rhine, pattern editor for American Quilter magazine)
One of the most obvious and frequent mistakes made by beginning quilters when joining rows of blocks is poor alignment. This is especially true when working with sashed blocks and rows that don’t have cornerstones (the squares usually found between block sashing), causing the rows to look crooked (fig. 1).

To prevent this from happening, as you line up your sashed rows for sewing be careful to match the sashing seams between blocks on the two rows (fig. 2). To check before sewing, fold down the top row to make sure sashing pieces are aligned (fig. 3) then pin to secure.

International wedding story

Weddings seem to be on my mind lately, no doubt due to my new status as a future mother of the bride. Helle-May Cheney, a talented quilt designer who will be featured in a future issue of American Quilter, recently sent me this charming wedding story.

“I am a first-generation Estonian-American with nearly all my family still living in Estonia. After 50 years of Soviet occupation, Estonia regained its independence in 1991, finally allowing me the opportunity to visit and get to know my relatives. This summer our visit had a very special purpose—to attend the wedding of my cousin Liina and her Norwegian fiancé, Harald.
Of course this meant a wedding quilt was in order! I wanted it to reflect both homelands also be a memento of the occasion. For the center, I made a patchwork version of the traditional striped woven wool skirt that my cousin would wear at the wedding. The border reflected the colors of the Estonian flag (blue, black, and white) and the Norwegian flag (blue, red, and white). A blue ribbon weaving through a white chain represented the joining of two cultures, families, and the multitude of friends.
The wedding ceremony took place on a picture-perfect summer day at a church built in 1534. The 100 guests, about half from Norway, were invited to wear the traditional dress of their native country and region, which made for a colorful wedding!
From the church, the guests joined the wedding party in a motorcade to Liina’s mother’s house where both bride and groom had to demonstrate their readiness for married life by chopping wood (groom), darning a sock (bride), and donning a two-person apron to jointly peel a potato! Once the tasks were performed to the satisfaction of the Norwegian and Estonian grandmothers, we were on our way to the reception.

After a champagne toast, I presented my quilt to the couple and invited all guests to sign the quilt in the white chain. As is the custom, Liina changed into her national dress at midnight and was presented with her married woman’s apron and hat by her mother and mother-in-law. The band played on well into the night with a combination of Norwegian and Estonian pop favorites, and all language barriers were broken with dance and laughter.

The wedding was a beautiful merging of cultures, traditions, and ages. I was so happy to have been a part of it all!”

Read more about Helle-May and see her quilt designs at www.HelleMayDesigns.com.

Quilt Tzedakah

The Jewish New Year, which begins at sundown this coming Wednesday, is a time for introspection. A busy Jewish quilter in Ann Arbor, Michigan, who prefers to remain anonymous, sent me this message to share with others as we approach the High Holy Days:
"When I became a Jewish woman in 1996, I learned two phrases in Hebrew: tzedakah, which translates as justice and refers to charitable giving; and tikkun olam, which translates literally as “to repair the world” and means social action in English. It was not until ten years later, when I began quilting, that I found a way of making these words truly my own.

Every third or fourth quilt I make now is what I call a tzedakah quilt (one is shown here). Through my guild, many other quilters and I have donated quilts to our community’s women’s shelter. Learning about this program also inspired me to start donating quilts to a local children’s hospital, where there is an ongoing need for twin-size and baby quilts for the children admitted. I have also donated quilts for benefits, such as for our hospice care facility, and of course, I have given away many quilts just to family and friends.

These are my ways of giving back (tzedakah) and repairing a broken world (tikkun olam). The gift of a quilt has always been a gift of practicality and beauty, given with the hope of brightening a person’s surroundings and providing a pleasing, meaningful memory.

All forms of tzedakah and tikkun olam are important. It’s just nice to find a way of doing it that expresses all the love and care that a quilt does. I’m grateful to have discovered this tradition."