I didn’t always care about perfect points and seams, but when I first started longarming my own *ahem* very special quilts, I realized my quilts would be easier to quilt and my artistic vision would be better served if I figured out how to piece really, really well. I stopped longarming and gave myself six months […]
New Pattern in the Shop! And a Sneaky Marking Technique
I am delighted to present Midwinter Mandala available as a PDF download in my shop.I have had this idea for a snowflake design running around in my head for a while now, so when Betz White asked me to participate in “A Banner Year”, a seasonal sew-along project for our School of Wool Facebook group, […]
Bold Color Can Be a Neutral
Phew, it’s been a while! I’ve been blogging twice a week over at Modern Quilts Unlimited, so while I have been a busy blogger, it’s not been necessarily here. Today, though, I have been asked to be part of the Scrap Quilt Designer Showcase that is being hosted by Persimmon Dreams! Scrap quilts are, for […]
Anyone else obsessed with tiny dresses?
Every time one of those videos comes out with the teeny tiny bespangled and beflowered couture dresses, I have to watch it about five times. In a world where we are losing the knowledge to do handwork of this sort, I think couturiers are often the repository for that skill base, because people expect it […]
What you need to know about batting
I think everyone is probably familiar with what batting is: nonwoven fibers that are loosely collected together to form a layer of insulation between the top and backing of a quilt. When my Grampa Townzen was a kid during the Depression, he’d card to cotton into little pads he’d hand up to the women folk […]
A story about quilting wobbles, or, why I learned to pay attention to piecing rules
One of my favorite things about quilting for others, and that I’m most proud of, is helping people finish their quilts in the way they want, so that they look their best. My goal with my quilting is to take the top my customer has worked so hard on and add my quilting as […]
Yay for School Days, and Not just for the Kids!
I am going to own the fact that I go shopping for school supplies early and often: early, because who wants to be hustling the night before the first day, scrambling for presharpened #2 pencils and boxes of crayons that don’t smell funny or have glitter sparkles in them? (yeah yeah, my little girl would […]
The #sewtake20 experiment
It’s a chronic problem: having the desire, no, the need! to make things and feeling there is never enough time. Between the kids and the business and many important but secret deadlines, I’ve really been feeling stretched thin, and the things I have been craving to make keep getting set aside. I know I’m not alone. […]
Slow and Steady Scrap Quilt
If there’s a 12 step program for quilting, I would have to introduce myself by saying, “My name is Mandy Leins, and I have been buying fabric for 15 years.” The truth is, though, I haven’t bought (very much) fabric for the last couple because I have so much that I don’t even have places […]
Quilting Technique of the Week: When fabric bleeds
As my mom would say: “Oh honey, it was so sad.” I was on my way to teach a quilting class at my LQS last week, and had a big plastic bin of things to share with me. It’s been a long, gross winter, and that day it was raining and foggy. All the parking […]
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