Welcome! My name is Mandy Leins, and I am a teacher of all things quilting: longarm and domestic quilting, and piecing. If you’ve found your way here through the BERNINA Ambassador blog hop, please you take a look around! I have tutorials and techniques over here, and my course offerings are here. I was taking […]
My podcast with Pat Sloan is available!
In case you missed it, my interview with Pat Sloan is in the archives and ready for listening! You can find it here, at American Patchwork and Quilting Radio or on Pat’s website here. I’d love to hear your thoughts! We talk about my quilts, quilting, and my book. happy quilting, y’all!
Modern Quilts, Traditional Shows: My Interview with Scott Murkin, Part 2
This is Part 2 of my interview with Scott Murkin. In Part 1, Scott talked about his own background as a quilter and Certified Judge by the National Quilting Association, and the judging process for shows. The rest of his interview is below, and touches on modern quilts in traditional shows: Now that the categories have […]
Modern Quilts, Traditional Shows: My Interview with Scott Murkin part 1
Over the last few years, modern quilts have been seen in categories at MQX, AQS, Road to California, and have a dedicated show, QuiltCon. With its second show kicking off in a week, and an announcement that it will become a yearly event at different locations, it seemed to me as though modern quilts were finding their place. […]
Vision Board 2015: Giving Myself Permission
Carrie told me in a comment on my Vision Board post that over the course of the year, my board would reveal more of itself, and possibly change meaning as I moved though. I thought I’d keep track of those changes and go ahead and share them, since I had already shared my board. One of the […]
Quilters, for real
Over the last 12 years or so, I have watched the “modern” quilting thing burble up from the morass of the internet and become A Thing. Lately, though, I’ve been exasperated by how it’s become more rigid and controlling it is. Can’t we all just make quilts already, and support each other without having to […]
A good feel for Rome
I may not be a practicing archaeologist anymore, but the ancient world is always very much in my thoughts every day. Thousands of years between then and now, and thousands of miles, but we Westerners are still very much creatures of ancient Rome and Greece. What I have found is usually the hardest for people […]
A great quilt historian–and links for modern style quilters
If you don’t know Barbara Brackman and her work as a quilt historian, writer, and designer, you should. She has two blogs I read (she actually has several more): Material Culture, which deals with fabrics and quilts from all periods, and Historically Modern, which she describes as “…a blog about the traditions of modernism, with an eye to […]
Technique Does Matter
Some of you may follow my “technique of the week” and may find that it’s awfully simple. How to get a perfect 1/4″ seam? Really? But the building blocks of great work, even improv and modern quilting, are knowledge of how to make with good technique. I turned professional because, gosh darn it, I have high […]
Fun with a new-to-me technique of the week
This one is a simple one, but it was one that got me thinking of a all the different ways it can be applied. I had originally drawn a sketch of the tree of life quilt that I wanted to do so that it would be 80″ x 80″, but after talking with my client, […]
