The Surprising Hexie

Posted by Nadine

I’ve been bitten. It’s also contagious, I’m sure of it. I fear there’s no cure. It’s the dreaded hexie bug!

To be clear, it’s not that I’ve never heard of hexies. I knew about them long before this latest fad hit the quilting community. 25 years ago, a coworker was busy making a hexie quilt, and she was kind enough to share the method with me. In all the years since, every time English Paper Piecing has come up, I’ve thought to myself, “Eh, not really my thing.” Seems I may have been incorrect on that point. 😉 Continue reading →

The Fate of the Misery Quilt

Posted by Nadine

Much of the last few years has been spent feeling guilty about all the quilting supplies and other “stuff” that I have that I don’t use, and when I do work with it on Inchie quilts (thinking “I should really finish all that because I have ten new Inchie quilts completed ready to pattern…”) or some of the other ideas I have for quilts, I get overwhelmed pretty quickly by all of the things I’d need to do to get back into the “business of quilting.” The patterning, marketing, teaching, social media mixing and many other things drive me away from my studio before I ever really get started on much.

I tend to create in fits and starts, with long periods of ambivalence in between. Sure there have been outside issues that have contributed to this cycle of short-but-wild bursts of motivation interspersed with longer bouts of near-apathy (lack of time, health issues, family things) but at bottom, it’s a problem in my head and heart more than anything else. The longer this continues, the more I miss the creative energy and motivation that used to be a part of my daily life. Continue reading →

Coming Soon: Fabric Bias

Posted by Nadine

See the After the Move post for updates about RSS, Pinterest and Etsy here!

I’ve been thinking of changing my website name and URL for quite a while. Years even. As I said here, DreamWeaver’s Quilts isn’t exactly meaningful in any way at all. It’s just what I came up with back in 2001 when I decided I should have a website. When I started blogging in 2006, I just set up the blog in a subdirectory of DreamWeaver’s Quilts and started writing. At that time, the focus was predominantly quilting so it all made sense.

As the years went by, DWQ was constricting at times. Not that quilting wasn’t still the focus, but the feel of DWQ wasn’t quite right. It feels very formal and traditional, and while I can be that, I’m not always that so it’s not always a great fit. While I love the logo that a friend designed especially for me, I also like changing things up and there’s not much to do with it to give it a fresh look. I have mostly loved DWQ for a lot of years, but it’s time for a change. Continue reading →

Portrait Quilt on the “Someday” List

Posted by Nadine

I found this photo while I was digging for the old quilt photos for the Memory Lane Monday post this week. I sat and looked at it for quite a while, remembering the day my girls were riding one of the horses together at my parents cabin one summer. I’d love to make a portrait quilt based on this photo and hang it in our living area!

Sunday Stash and InchieSee Playtime

Posted by Nadine

Last week I made a quick trip to my LQS to pick up my Pfaff 1475 with its brand new motherboard. Ouch on that. The machine is probably nearing 20 years old and it’s been packed up in the original box for about five years. When I took it out a few weeks back hoping to use it when my Bernina needed repairs, the Pfaff was DoA on the sewing table. It was NOT a great week to try to sew anything!

Despite being essentially a backup machine these days, I decided I should go ahead and repair it now since it’s a really wonderful machine (one of the older Pfaff machines that was made in Germany before Husqvarna Viking bought Pfaff out and moved production to cheaper areas), and if I didn’t have it repaired now it wasn’t likely to get done at all as the parts for it are no longer manufactured. And who knows? One of my girls might eventually decide to sew and need a machine… maybe… okay I’m reaching here I know!

While I was at the LQS, I did the mad dash through the fabric in hopes to pick up some more of that yummy Kate Spain fabric that I ran short on, and maybe a couple of bluesy aquas to go with it. Continue reading →

Coming Soon: Memory Lane Monday @ DWQ

Posted by Nadine

I’ve thought about all of my older quilts from time to time, and realized that not only are they not all labeled (yes, I know…bad quilter award here), I don’t even have photos of all of them. I have a whole house full of quilts; they’re in closets, on racks, on the walls, draped over chairs and couches, and stacked up on desks and cabinets. There are many more quilts in the house than I’ve documented on this site or anywhere else.

I began to photograph all of my quilts last week planning to add pages to the gallery section on the website to document them all. I’ve made it through all of the smaller quilts that I could throw up on the design wall, though I need to hope for a sunny weekend day so that ITMan can help me with photographing the larger ones outside I think. I’ve also spent a bit of time digging around in my (apparently) rather faulty memory trying to figure out exactly when some of them were made since I didn’t label them!

Then over the weekend I wandered around the Internet (I do that way too much btw!), and I found myself on LuAnn Kessi’s site. Her machine quilting is a-maz-ing, and I love her sketchbook work, wow! In her profile she says, “I also feel it is important to display my original quilts, as my older work defines who I am today.” Continue reading →