If a colleague whose opinion you value says, “You really ought to meet so-and-so,” agree to it immediately. A few months ago, a Winterset friend (Jerry)* said, “Marianne, you really ought to meet Julie Gammack.” I think the world of Jerry, so I said yes. Julie Gammack is an Iowa native, a former Des Moines … Read more
During the couple of decades I traveled all over the US (and beyond), teaching and lecturing about quilts for quilters’ guilds and at conferences, I met hundreds of quilters every year. The conviviality among the students in my workshops was one of the many pleasures of my job. Quilters told me often that half of … Read more
The first time I told a group of quilters I didn’t have any unfinished projects, they responded with the kind of mild hostility acne-plagued teenagers direct toward the really-nice teenager with the perfect complexion. They were students in a workshop I was teaching at the time—which meant that day they had started yet another project … Read more
In my twenties and early thirties, I taught many local women my age and older the basics of quilt making. Those basics included tool recommendations, hand and machine piecing, pattern drafting (not many books of patterns available in the late 1970s), and of course, fabric selection. Back then, Winterset had Alexander Fabrics on the north … Read more
I’d forgotten about the fun, recorded phone chat I had a few months ago with Elizabeth Townsend Gard until I received a reminder that it was about to become available. Dr. Gard, a Tulane University law professor and avid quilter, heads up The Quilting Army, a group of quilters that studies copyright law in relation … Read more
Liz Porter and I were in our mid-twenties (both of us mothers of toddlers) back in 1976 when we met in a beginners quilting class offered through Iowa State University Extension in the small town of Winterset, Iowa. In no time at all, we were team-teaching ourselves—partly because there was local demand, and partly because … Read more
The weekend’s forecast is for sunny skies and temperatures in the low 80s—ideal weather for a jaunt to my hometown, Winterset, Iowa, for Iowa Quilt Museum’s annual Airing of the Quilts. You’ll feast your eyes on hundreds of quilts on display from 10 to 4 in dozens of locations, many of them outdoors. Quilts will … Read more
Last October, I shared the exciting news that MONUMENTS, a new film by Jack C. Newell*, had won spots in a number of (virtual, natch, because of COVID) film festivals—the Nashville Film Festival and Heartland Film Festival (Indianapolis). MONUMENTS was inspired by my short story, “My Ashes at The Met,” and I had the pleasure … Read more
If you could choose just one quilt from the approximately 6000 in the International Quilt Museum’s vast collection and make it your own, which one would it be? A gorgeous Baltimore Album? An exquisite French whole cloth? Grace Snyder’s amazing Flower Basket Petit Point patchwork with its 87,000 tiny pieces? I was recently given the … Read more
The Quilt Show (TQS), hosted by my pals Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims, is offering a special treat this Sunday, December 13—a chance to enjoy an array of excerpts from the program’s past thirteen years of “Legend” interviews. (Because of the pandemic, they weren’t able to travel to a location to profile a special person … Read more