I WAS A QUILTER ONCE UPON A TIME!!

I have mentioned in this blog before that I spent 20 years making quilts for publication in books and magazines. In addition, I traveled to conferences and to teach quiltmaking throughout the U.S. The above quilt, entitled "Starshine", was the first quilt I had on a cover of a magazine - way back in 1990. Whenever I would speak to a group of non-quilters, I always got the same question, "How long does it take to make a quilt?" Well, of course, it varies on the complexity and size of the quilt. But for this particular quilt which is 78" x 78", I kept track of the statistics so I could answer the usual questions. So, for you non-quilters out there, "Starshine" took a little over 800 hours from conception to completion. The 3001 individual pieces are sewn together on the sewing machine, but the layers (top, batting, and backing) were hand-quilted together. There are 96 different fabrics used in the quilt and it took about 500 yards of thread to just hand-quilt the layers together. (You can click on picture to enlarge.)



Over those 20 years, I made a bunch of quilts which I have stored in "the quilt closet"! Be forewarned, if and when my blogging brain goes dead (like today); I will probably drag out another quilt to show you. If you get tired of seeing my quilts, please let me know. Hopefully, they won't show up on the blog too often.