Quilt Designer News

Linda Laney
M&L Designs
www.mandldesigns.com

Q:  Why are you a quilt designer?  When did you start designing quilts and quilted projects and what has been your inspiration throughout your quilt designing career?

A:  My love of fabric began when I was 10.  My grandmother gave me a stack of fabric, a cardboard square, a pencil and scissors. She then showed me how to arrange the squares into a pattern and sew them together on her treadle machine.  Since then I have been hooked.  I designed my first quilt at the age of 14.  It was a quilt for my youngest sister.  Over the years I have made many quilts for family and friends. My family has always been my inspiration for quilt designs, starting with my grandmother, mom, sisters, and now my husband, children, and grandchildren.

Terri Sontra
Purple Moose Designs

Q:  Why are you a quilt designer? When did you start designing quilts and quilted projects and what has been your inspiration throughout your quilt designing career?

A:  I am a quilt designer because I can’t help but not be one. I started quilting around 1984 and quickly made every mistake in the book. Some of those mistakes led to “new” or re-invented designs. I discovered that I really liked taking an idea and figuring out how to interpret it in cloth and discovering new surprises. My first commercial pattern, 9 Patch Album Runner, started as somewhat of a lark. A new quilt shop opened in town and the owner asked if I would teach a class. She wanted me to come by the next day to show her a class sample geared towards absolute beginners. I went home that afternoon and made up a design, sewed it, quilted it and showed it to her the next day. If I had taken more time to think about it, I might not have begun this journey. That was in 1996. When my daughter was small I became a stay-at-home Mom which morphed into a work-at-home Mom as my business grew.

I find inspiration everywhere – nature, tile floors, ancient places of worship, art from other cultures, coloring books, a bowl of noodles – anything can be artful if you look at it as such. I recently purchased an old ceramic pitcher in an antique store because the design on it will make a great quilt! It is a tired old saying but I truly cannot live enough lifetimes to make all the quilts that are stuck in my head.

“Nine Patch Table Runner”
Designed by Terri Sontra, Purple Moose Designs

Kristi L Parker
www.ChickenSoupDesigns.com

Q:  Is there a special time of the day, day of the week or emotion that you find yourself in when you sit down to design a quilt block or quilt? Can you tell us about it?

A:  Inspiration for design ideas can come from almost anywhere.  For example, the design for “Tropical Whimsy” came from listening to my daughter sharing the experiences she had as an exchange student in the Dominican Republic. A current design that I’m working on actually came from looking at a motif on an antique plate! 

When I am quilting by hand or machine, I tend to “zone out”…it is my stress relief, my escape from the world!

Beth Helfter, Eva Paige Quilt Designs
www.EvaPaigeQuiltDesigns.com

Q:  Why are you a quilt designer?  When did you start designing quilts and quilted projects and what has been your inspiration throughout your quilt designing career?

A:  I’ve been quilting since 1995 and started designing my own patterns in 2005, when after two and a half years of being strictly a stay at home mom, I felt I needed to do something to stimulate my brain a little bit. Starting EPQD was exactly what I needed; I love sharing my own love of creating quilts with others while still being able to be my own boss and spend time with my family.  Teaching workshops and giving trunk show lectures, as well as designing new patterns lets me interact with other quilters, and hopefully teach something new or inspire someone to try something a little bit differently. The best feeling I have gotten since starting EPQD was after a trunk show lecture, when a member of the audience came up to me and said “I think you just changed my life.” – referring to my insistence that our quilts aren’t meant to be perfect, they are meant to be fun to make and treasured articles for those who love us. If I can change a life every few years, slowly we ‘imperfect quiltmakers’ will take over the world!

“Feelin’ Hot Hot Pink” designed by Beth Helfter
EvaPaige Quilt Designs

Barbara Douglas, Stone Cottage Designs
www.StoneCottageQuilts.com

Q:  Why are you a quilt designer?  When did you start designing quilts and quilted projects and what has been your inspiration throughout your quilt designing career?

A:  I am a quilt designer because I love the tactile nature of textiles. Fabrics are my artistic medium. I can’t paint and my drawing is very poor, but I have a knack for manipulating fabric.  I don’t remember a time that I didn’t design something – doll clothes, my clothes and quilts.  I started my very first quilt when I was eight years-old.  As a business and career, I began in 1999.  I can be inspired by almost anything, a shape, a shadow, an object or a plant.  Often, I find myself looking at things and wondering if I can translate it into fabric. The historical connection with women of the past is also part of why I do this and to have a tiny place in what will become quilting history is also incredibly intriguing.

Barbara Bieraugel
http://BarbaraBieraugelDesigns.com

Q:  Why are you a quilt designer?  When did you start designing quilts and quilted projects and what has been your inspiration throughout your quilt designing career? 

A:  Even though I had sewed most of my clothes while in college and early 20’s, I was not a quilter.  I was a knitter.  While living in New Jersey, a neighbor, whose husband was battling cancer asked me to go to a quilt class with her.  Sure why not?  It would be something to do – not that I would ever keep making quilts!!

HMMMM, that was mid 1990’s.  I followed directions at first but it was not long before I had fabric and designed a pattern to use it.  Never thought of publishing and selling patterns until we moved to Hawaii and I made my original Honu (turtle) quilt.  Then the local quilt store owner started asking me to make patterns that were of a tropical nature, since there was a lack of them.  And in 2006 I released my tropical fish series.  Many of my patterns are nature inspired.  If we follow the color combinations that nature gives and the flora and fauna that is out there how can we lose?  So, follow nature and then let the fabric do a lot of the work for you, would be words (I would suggest) to an inspiring quilter.

Fish Sampler designed by Barbara Bieraugel

Barbara Bieraugel Designs offers quilt designs for you from Hawaii. The applique and pieced quilt patterns are often tropical or nature inspired.  Realistic applique patterns offer you colorful tropical fish, butterfly, flowers, sea turtle or honu, and even a couple of giraffes.  Many of the Hawaiian quilt patterns were designed from those flowers in my gardens here in Kailua Kona, Hawaii.

Dori Hawks
www.thequiltercommunity.com:  Your online quilting magazine

Q:  Is there a special time of the day, day of the week or emotion that you find yourself in when you sit down to design a quilt block or quilt? Can you tell us about it?

A:  I always design best when I have a deadline…..I do some of my most creative work when I have to do a block or a quilt for a challenge, an event in someone’s life, a book, a website, etc. It gets my mind working and I feel an energy to create.