And Sew It Goes

Tag: creativity

  • Gee’s Bend Quilting Retreat: Day Two

    Quilters love to quilt. You can feel it in the room. Watching them design quilts blocks and figure out next steps, is nothing short of inspiring.  I’ve made a few blocks, none with a purpose beyond practicing sewing quilting blocks in the tradition of Gee’s Bend quilts.  I’ve cut fabric into squares and strips. Gathered…

  • Good Old Pythagoras 

    Binding a quilt is something that many quilters avoid. It can be tricky and, at times, frustrating. I learned to bind a quilt by watching a series of YouTube videos. This was super helpful, but they didn’t explain the why. Why does this work?  Because I love math, I couldn’t leave it there.  Why does…

  • Precision and Practice

    What better way to encourage and use math skills than through sewing? The precision of math is lovely. The precision of my sewing, however, varies. Sometimes my seams wander. Other times, a template slips and the pieces I thought were cut to perfection are anything but. It keeps me humble. No matter how carefully I…

  • The Math of It All

    I love math. I know– it’s not a popular thing to admit, but there you have it. I’m a math nerd and I embrace it. The love of math has come in especially handy with sewing. I enjoy the math involved in measuring, cutting and piecing. I don’t always get it right the first time,…

  • Where the Road Leads

    I’ll admit it—I spend too much time scrolling through Instagram. I love images, art, and learning, and I’ve learned to curate my feed so that it mostly reflects what inspires my creative work or delights my quirky sense of humor. Somehow, I began seeing posts from Walk for Peace, USA, which follows Buddhist monks walking…

  • Balancing Color & Style, A Creative Challenge

    When my nieces each asked me to make quilts for their daughters, I was more than happy to say yes. Through this process, I learned something important: there has to be something in each  project for me, too. Selfish? Maybe. Sensible? Absolutely. I worked with the color palettes they gave me based on their children’s…

  • Fiber Arts & Social Justice

    25 Million Stitches As I thought about the stitches my machine sewed over the past year – two million of them — I was reminded of a powerful exhibit I saw at the WIsconsin museum of Quilts and Fiber Arts: 25 Million Stitches. I visited it two years ago, yet it has stayed with me.…

  • Keep Learning

    As I listened to a podcast this week, one idea made me sit up and pay attention: you can’t stay young unless you challenge yourself to keep learning. We arrive in this world knowing nothing, and we learn everything—every single thing—through trial and error: talking, crawling, walking, hopping, drawing, writing, reading, and on and on.…

  • Wonder

    As a person who loves words- reading them, writing them, hearing their sounds- reading about the art of writing as inspired by Maggie Smith is always joyous. You may have come to read this blog with the expectation of learning more about sewing and making. Writing is making. It’s about bringing words together in new…