13 Replies to “Why I Make Quilts: An Essay”

  1. I believe I love your quilts so much because they do connect to quilters that came before and to newer quilting traditions too. And because you let your family use some of them!

  2. Such a great essay and timely for me. I am at a place in my quilting journey ( of over 20 years) that I am struggling a bit. Life has recently got messy and busie than the last few years and it has affected my joy of quilt making. I look around my space and see the things I want to finish, try, and start. I still putter at mindless piecing because I feel like it wld be like starving myself if I didn’t. But reading what you wrote helped me realize that this is all part of it. Like life. Joy sorrow, enthusiasm and struggles. So I will keep piecing because I now remember why I do it. Other than it is like breathing. But the “more” reasons. Thank you for sharing!

  3. Frances, reading your words makes me wish I was an author. Then I could find words to describe how your tales delight me!! So glad you write, so we can enjoy!❤️

  4. What a wonderful essay! I want to sit down and write the stories behind each of my quilts, because there are stories. I mad my first quilt after my mom died to give a special gift to my sister that first Christmas without her. I was in my late 50s and used my grandmother’s Singer Slant o magic which I had learned to sew on. I found making that quilt so peaceful, bring a flood of
    Memories of my grandma and my mom. It wasn’t long before I started making more.
    Didn’t mean to write so much here but I really loved your essay.

  5. Incredible. You have eloquently said much of what I and many others have been thinking for a very long time. And, I am envious of your remarkable writing skills. Thank you for this. I’ll keep it for future reference for a long long time.

  6. This! Just this! I agree with all that you have written here. It meshes with so many of my own quilty ideals and thoughts. You have stated them all so clearly and I just understood you exactly. This essay makes me want to sit down and chat with you about everything you have written. Thank you so much for sharing this with us all.

  7. Excellent points! I especially like the comparison of a trip to Paris to making quilts. Sometimes once the quilt is made, I lose interest in it and need to find somewhere for it to go.

  8. Your essay touches me. I began making quilts mostly as a hobby born of a love of fabric and as a pastime to share with my already-quilting daughter and daughter-in-law. I began in spite of an unshakable conviction that I would never be able to meet my mother’s standards of workmanship or exquisite quality of a finished product. Now, however, after several years and more than a dozen finished quilts, I am as tied to this process as surely as I am to my genes.

  9. Your essay was long, but I enjoyed it–kind of like making a quilt! I had to share it with a friend–kind of like sharing a quilt!

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