QUILTER | TEACHER | AUTHOR | FOUNDER
You’re not out to pasture but the green hues of the field start coming into focus when a fast-moving horse like me becomes the subject of tributes and end-of-career awards. In 2018, for example, The Quilt Show chose me as … Read More
In our mid-twenties, Liz Porter and I earned our quilting chops by teaching beginning classes in Winterset, Iowa, where we had recently learned the basics ourselves through an Iowa State University Extension class. After writing a popular book on quilted … Read More
Each month, when the Novel in a Year cohort I’m part of meets in person in Chicago, we catch up with each other on how our work is going, critique excerpts from two members, and receive master-class instruction on craft … Read More
I often call my most recently completed quilt my “latest, greatest.” That’s because the creative process is for me a kind of love affair. Conceptualizing a quilt, choosing the fabrics, cutting, sewing, watching the work take shape on my design … Read More
I’ve never lived in Mississippi, but my mother was born there in 1908. When I was a kid growing up in the 1950s, she took my brothers and me “home” from Houston to Rockport, near Hazlehurst, several times. In my … Read More
The induction of Fons & Porter this summer into the Quilters Hall of Fame prompted the Iowa Quilt Museum (IQM) in Winterset, Iowa—the little burg where our brand was born—to mount a retrospective of our work. Almost thirty pieces (all … Read More
I had not discovered Luis Alberto Urrea’s work until members of the Washington Island Literary Festival selection committee began looking at potential authors for last year’s event. Urrea’s collection of short stories, THE WATER MUSEUM, knocked my socks off, but … Read More
I’ve been a member of—and a fan of—the Quilt Alliance for a long time. QA is a nonprofit established in 1993 to collect stories about quilts from living quiltmakers so information about them is not lost to time. Some of … Read More
Even if I weren’t a member of the Washington Island Literary Festival planning committee (and therefore extremely proud), I’d be super pumped about the lineup of authors for this year’s event, September 20-22. Rebecca Makkai is returning, the first author … Read More
For several years, now, as I’ve pursued my love of fiction—as a writer rather than a reader—I’ve taken lots of classes, most of them at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival in Iowa City, a production of the University of Iowa, … Read More