Category: Quilting and Sewing

I went to lunch today with a friend whose husband passed away more than a year ago.  They met when they were 14 years old and spent most of their lives together.  It was sweet to hear her thoughts, and to see her courage as she works to find her way without him.  Another friend of ours lost his wife just days before Christmas, and every time we see him, he has tears on his cheeks.  As I drove home in the rain this afternoon, thoughts swirled in my mind, and all I wanted to do was curl up with a quilt and feel warm.  Warm and safe.  Of course, instead I had to go pick up kids from school, but I got this quilt out when I returned.  This is the “Morn Shall Tearless Be Quilt”, and I’m excited to tell you about it.

It’s kind of amazing how many ideas can come from just one quilt, or the scraps from one quilt.  This is one of those happy extras.  When I made my Vintage Spin quilt I saved all the cutoff scraps as I trimmed the dresden blocks.  Some time later, I sewed them all to these rectangular blocks with a simple top stitch on my machine.  Then I played with them on my design wall until ideas took shape.  I had over a hundred of them to experiment with.

This quilt was the first idea; more predictable, perhaps, than those that follow.  My second idea was the Awake Quilt , (pattern available here ).  A third is in the works.  The color scheme of all the blocks wa s actually influenced by this quilt first.  I wanted the cutoff curves to look like sunrise.  You know that moment of light just peeking over the horizon?  Where I live, it happens as the sun’s rays make it over the Wasatch mountains, creating often glorious sunrises.  Sometimes the beams stretch out visibly across the valley and it just takes your breath away.  I was thinking that it’s such a welcome sight!  Morning is like a promise kept.  So I chose my background block colors to represent dark, long nights, before any sign of light arrives.

Morning doesn’t always bring relief or joy.  Sometimes it brings tears.  Tears of loneliness, of facing another day without a loved one, or of carrying a burden that is only lighter in sleep.  Those things that make morning heavy and hard come in countless forms, and they are real.  So as I designed this quilt, I wanted to portray lots of mornings, successive mornings, mornings that keep coming while we wait for relief.  Mornings that trust the promise of good things to come even when it stays dark.   For the longest time I didn’t have a name for the quilt, until I attended my son’s choir concert.  There I heard a choral piece by Elaine Hagenberg, O Love .  I wept as I listened.  This was it.

Here are the lyrics:

O Love that will not let me go, I rest my weary soul in thee; I give thee back the life I owe, That in thy ocean depths its flow May richer, fuller be. ​ O Joy that seeks me through pain, I cannot close my heart to thee; I trace the rainbow through the rain, And feel the promise is not vain, That morn shall tearless be.

As I heard it, this was the feeling, the message I hoped to convey with my quilt.

Somehow, some way, if we don’t close our hearts to it, the day will come when morn shall tearless be.  We may lose count of the mornings in the waiting, but it will come.  This is the promise.  This is my belief.  And this is my quilt that says it.  Morn SHALL tearless be.

Much love to you, Jennifer

I shared the Stand Quilt , my newest quilt pattern , as well as my thoughts behind it, last week.  Today’s quilt is the Stand Quilt option two, which is the Stand Quilt pattern made without the small blocks as side borders.

It’s smaller (48″x64″), but equally dynamic.  This quilt is a lot like my Hunter’s Star patterns ( here and here ) that you can make with just two fabrics.  Color placement and other steps are simple with only two!  The design is also great for any gender.  A great choice for social sewing, you can get everything cut, and then sew the same blocks without too much thought.  I like taking projects like this to retreats or sew nights with friends.

I made this version with a lovely, deep green, called Everglade by Kona.  It’s paired with a print from Carolyn Friedlander. Her fabrics and patterns appear often in my studio!

In fact, you see a peek of another print of hers on the back.  I sent this one to Melissa at Sew Shabby Quilting , and she chose a fun swirl pattern.  The same green binding finishes it off nicely.

The Stand Quilt option two is a nice thing to have, since it makes the quilt such a fast finish.  I’ll probably make one or two more as gifts before Christmas.  This smaller version requires just 2.5 yards of each fabric, plus 1/2 yard more for binding.  So fabric selection is a breeze.  While I’m a huge advocate of auditioning ALL the fabrics to find the perfect one when designing my quilts, I do love making them when it’s simple, too.  A quick decision and you’re off!  I’d like to make one with a juicy floral as one of the fabrics.

So that wraps up my introductions for the Stand Quilt pattern .  The Resolute pattern collection is coming along.  You’ve seen Awake (with a second version here ), and Arise ( another one here ), Stand (with side borders) and this Stand quilt option two.  Listen and Serve patterns are underway.  Look for them soon!

Happy Sewing!

Awake , Arise , and… what’s next?  Stand.  I’m here tonight to show you my newest pattern design, the Stand Quilt .  It’s the 3rd pattern in my Resolute Collection, which is a small collection of quilt patterns inspired by simple but powerful words.  A few favorite definitions of “stand” are “to remain upright in a moral sense, to be fixed or steady, to endure, or to maintain one’s ground”. Life offers us countless opportunities to stand, therefore, we must choose where and how we do it.

Stand is a simple design, made complex as block sizes grow and shrink.  Standing for something that matters is a lot like that.  A simple act, but we have to grow and shrink the ways we do it if we want to make a difference.  It’s simple but complex.  Easy and hard.  Consistent yet changing.   It’s a two color quilt, making fabric selection simple  (3.25 yards per color).  It also has an option to remove the borders on the left and right sides.  If it gets tedious, you can skip them.  I’ll share photos of a quilt like that soon.  With the side borders, it measures 56″ x 64″.

This pattern collection has been fun for me to work on.  In many ways, it’s me, being more “me” than ever before in my quilting.  Bringing together things I love deeply:  quilts, and words, feels very authentic.  I’ve loved words all my life.  Choosing a word, or a sequence of them, based on where I am and where I wish to go, bridging multiple facets of life, was fun.  And totally ME.  It’s probably a series I could continue forever, but I won’t.

Picking a word and then designing a quilt for what that word means to me, was challenging.  A challenge I enjoyed thoroughly.  I’m sure all of us would design something totally different if this was a group exercise.  But I’ve enjoyed the process, learned good things, and each design has surprised me in its own way.  I used my scraps to design the quilt back.

I’m learning to be  intentional and careful about what I stand for and how I do it – big and small ways, obvious and subtle, private and public.  The Stand Quilt pattern is now available here in my Etsy shop .  I hope you’ll make one with me!

Happy Sewing!