Hello My Quilting Friends

Today I'm chatting with Margaret Leuwen the business owner behind MissMarkersQuilts.com. Margaret is a longarm quilter, shares YouTube videos, and hosts fun quilt alongs throughout the year. For the past few years Margaret has shared quilt along projects online. This year instead of one massive quilt along, she's sharing Quilt of the Quarter - four different quilts which take a quarter of the year to create and are made with fat quarters! Her last Quilt of the Quarter will be this beautiful Christmas tree quilt using Kaffe Fasset fabrics. All of the Quilts of the Quarter are projects Margaret designs herself to tackle her fat quarter stash. She designs the quilt patterns so you can make multiple sizes depending on how many fat quarters you start with. This is great because fat quarters are often something I collect, but find hard to use up! Margaret shares the How-To information of her quilt alongs on YouTube and shares any written directions on Facebook. She has trouble with the written directi

Meet Amy Johnson, the creator of Amy's Free Motion Quilting Adventures where she's shared many videos on machine quilting with rulers. She's was one of the first quilters to try longarm rulers on her home machine and she's taught two Craftsy classes on this topic as well: Quilting with Rulers on a Home Machine and Creative Quilting with Rulers. She started by simply blogging her quilting adventures, then taught the Craftsy class and opened an online store to carry the tools, rulers, and feet that support the classes. I send everyone to Amy's website for ruler feet because she will know what foot will fit your machine the best. Amy was a stay at home mom, but then her husband was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and this changed their lives completely. Now he works repairing the sewing machines at Sew Simple, the machine dealership they own in Lynchburg, VA. They've just recently moved the shop to a new building that has a separate classroom so Amy has space for teaching and

Laura is a freelance educator and pattern designer and the creator behind Sew Very Easy, her YouTube Channel that has new videos coming out every Tuesday and Thursday at 2 pm. Her first video was about her tablecloth quilts - yes, she eats on her quilts! Honestly that's a great idea so we can see and enjoy more quilts around the house. Laura shares videos on sewing and quilting and plans her tutorials around seasonal projects and items she's curious about and wants to create. She occasionally will publish a series of videos like her three part how to sew on buttons, but for the most part you only need to watch one video to see the entire tutorial. Her process for creating a video is pretty simple - she gets an idea, then researches the materials required, and designs the pattern. As she's writing and planning, she's also acquiring the materials and keeps the entire project organized in a bin on her shelf. Once the bin is filled and she has all the materials and pattern created, Laura s

Meet Karlee Porter, the creator of Graffiti Quilting, a method for free motion quilting and combining designs to create unique textures for your quilts. Karlee teaches classes and has written and published two books on Graffiti Quilting. Learn more about Karlee at http://www.karleeporter.com/

Meet April Wells, a professional longarm quilter who started out making a simple baby quilt for her son. Hear how she transitioned from a home machine to a Gammill longarm and balances longarm quilting with raising her kids and homeschooling.

Frances O'Roark Dowell is best known as the author of such novels for children as Dovey Coe and The Secret Language of Girls. More recently, she has been publishing fiction for quilters, including last year's novel, Birds in the Air. Frances is also a long-time podcaster--her podcast The Off-Kilter Quilt has been on the air for seven years now. Learn more about Frances at http://offkilterquilt.com/

Would you like to design your own quilt pattern? Meet Sheri Cifaldi-Morrill, a quilter and pattern designer and learn her process of designing and writing patterns. Sheri specializes in designing modern quilts and patterns and believes that design and content have a symbiotic relationship. You can learn more about Sheri at WholeCircleStudio.com

This week I'm chatting with the host of the Modern Sewciety podcast, Stephanie Kendron! Stephanie is a terrific quilter, business owner, and has just recently released the 120th episode of her podcast. You can find her podcast and learn more about Stephanie at http://www.modernsewciety.com/

What is a monochromatic quilt? Learn more about it in this latest podcast episode with Andi Stanfield, author of the book Monochromatic Quilts: Amazing Variety. Discover how Andi got into making quilts that highlight a single color family and how she co-authored this book with her mom Mary McElvain. Learn more about Andi at https://truebluequilts.wordpress.com

Meet Jackie Kunkel, a true quilting Superwoman because she seems to be doing so much at once - teaching, writing, designing fabric and more. Learn how she balances all these different creative outlets and runs her quilting business successfully. Learn more about Jackie at https://cvquiltworks.com/

Learn how fabrics are designed for the wholesale market that are then turned into clothing or accessories by other manufacturers and sold as finished items. This is quite a different process from fabric that is designed specifically for quilting. Learn more about Leah Kabaker and see her beautiful projects at her blog: http://noidlehandshere.com/wp/

This week I'm chatting with Vicki Holloway about time management and how she balances a full time job, longarm quilting, and blogging daily. That is a LOT of stuff for one person to do and Vicki's tips are super helpful for getting organized, keeping track of what you're making, and moving forward steadily with your projects. Check out Vicki's website at: https://mycreativecorner3.wordpress.com/

Meet Julie Persinger, a longarm quilter from Tennessee who got back into quilting after her son was diagnosed with diabetes. Julie has transformed from a hand quilter who thought machine quilting was "cheating" to a professional longarm quilter and we talk a lot about that transition and how to balance quilting, parenting, and family life. Julie has quilted many quilts for Luke Haynes and his log cabin series. You can find her on Instagram @persinable.

In this episode of Hello My Quilting Friends I'm chatting with Kate Colleran from SeamsLineaDream.com about writing quilt patterns and the risks and benefits of offering free quilt patterns to drive traffic to your website or quilting business. Kate is a quilting author, teacher, and quilt designer from Colorado. We also chat about the workload professional quilters carry and ways she generated sales at Quilt Market.

In this podcast I'm chatting with textile artist Carrie Barraco about her love of many crafts and the flow of quilting through her life. We had a very long intro to this podcast and lots of things to check out at LeahDay.com!

In this episode I'm talking with Nathan Erznoznik from Grace Company about longarm quilting frames and the transition from quilting on a home machine to quilting on a frame. I've met many quilters that are curious about longarm machines - how they are different, how they work, how the frame works, and how this makes quilting easier and faster. Grace Company has kindly sent me a Grace Qnique 14+ longarm which I've set up in my Quilty Arrow Table as a sit down longarm. I'll be sharing a new series called Sit Down Quilting Sunday to explore quilting on this bigger machine. You can learn more about Grace Company on their website www.GraceFrame.com You can find this new Sit Down Sunday series on my blog FreeMotionProject.com

In this episode I talk with professional quilter, podcaster, and youtuber Stephanie Soebbing about tracking the income of your quilting business. Stephanie shares how she built her business quickly and was able to leave her job by using online tools to track her income. Stephanie Soebbing is the creator of Quilt Addicts Anonymous, an awesome website filled with free tutorials, block-of-the-month quilt projects, and many video tutorials. She is also the creator of Sit and Sew Radio, a podcast for quilters! Learn more about Stephanie at: http://www.quiltaddictsanonymous.com/

Are you needing inspiration to finish your quilt projects this year? You've got to check out Patty Dudek's new OMG (One Monthly Goal) quilt along. Each month you can link up on Patty's website and share your goal for the month, then at the end of the month you'll link up again to share your progress. If you're like me and sick of all the UFOs (Unfinished Objects), WIPs (works in progress), PIGS (Projegs in Grocery Sacks) and PIPS (Projects in Pins) this episode will hopefully give you the push to get your projects organized into achievable goals each month. You can check out Patty's website at ElmStreetQuilts.com.

Learning how to quilt can be challenging! In this episode I share a lot of tips and trick to get started and share a lot of stories about my first attempts to make a quilt and the many disasters along the way. This episode is sponsored by my website LeahDay.com where you'll find tools, books, and quilt patterns to get you started making your first quilt today!

What is your word for the year? Have you decided what your focus will be in 2017? In this quilting podcast episode I share my thoughts on the new year and plan for moving forward with openness and simplicity.