Let me attempt to tell you the story, and explain what the coming months hold.

Way back on the morning of Day 5, or rather, on February 26, 2026, I was sitting on my back porch with my dogs, stitching away on the center block of the Jane Austen quilt I initially set out to be my focus for these 100 days. This has become my morning routine. After I finish dropping my kids off at school, I come home, grab my stitching, and turn my attention to my dogs. They get to enjoy having me outside with them, and I get to start my day in the fresh air with my needle, thread, and thimble. We all kind of win with this arrangement. Anyhow, I’m out on my back porch, stitching away in that rhythmic, slow, calming, repetitive, mindful manner that I love so much, and my mind begins to wander. . . .

This is what I love about hand quilting. It’s an activity that forces me to ground myself in one place, my hands are given a task, and my brain can heave that cleansing, cathartic sigh of finding a bit of calm within a crazy, hyperactive existence. Within these moments of calm, my brain can wander freely and explore the questions my heart holds the closest.

. . . And on that porch on the morning of Day 5, with the Jane Austen quilt in my hands, my brain once again began pondering whether or not I would be able to both hand appliqué and hand piece that entire quilt? It’s a question I’ve been pondering for months now, but there was something about the way the question had been growing within my thoughts that whole week. This idea of hand piecing a quilt was beginning to take over. It was calling to me, and on the afternoon of Day 5 I finally paused all that I was quilting, and turned my attention towards finding an answer.

That afternoon, I had begun working to excavate the enormous mountain of clutter that has taken over my sewing area these last six months. In doing so, I came across a couple of fabric sets and quilt pattern books I recently picked up at my local quilt shop. The pattern books were from Fabric Café’s 3-Yard Quilts series, and the fabric sets had been carefully selected and packaged by the crew at My Happy Place Quilt Shop. I picked the fabric package that spoke to me the most that afternoon, grabbed the quilt pattern I initially paired it with, and off I went! A short bit of cutting, marking, and stitching later I had found my quilting voice!

Suddenly, I was a Completely. Different. Quilter!

I have always loved the simplicity and mobility of hand quilting, but embracing the added step of hand piecing has felt as if I am home at last! It has peeled away and cast off so many layers of doubt, uncertainty, and anxiety I didn’t fully comprehend my quilting experience contained. I felt as if an enormous vice grip had released its hold on my chest and that I could breathe deeper than I have for months. I felt as if I found the calm in my body and a song in my soul. I felt as if I had finally found myself: who I truly am as a quilter.

I’m not one for “never” statements, nor am I about to get rid of my sewing machine, but discovering my affinity for hand piecing has unlocked a whole new quilting adventure for me. Very quickly, I began contemplating what to do with all of the quilt kits and projects I already have waiting for me. All of those quilt patterns are written to be used with a machine. They include steps using strip piecing and chain piecing and all these other sewing techniques I’ve learned that all require a sewing machine. How, I was asking myself, do I make these quilts I’ve already fallen in love with (and invested money into) and yet still feed my quilting passions by using my thimble? The answer revealed itself pretty quickly. I will be using my machine to finish specific projects, and I will trust the quilting skills and knowledge I’ve developed over the last 11 years I’ve been doing this, and I’ll adapt the other patterns to work with my thimble as needed.

I will hold off on elaborating more on this epiphany because it’s one of the exciting quilting paths I’m about to journey down. Not only am I planning on sharing my stories about what this will look like for me, but I also have the most perfect quilt project to start with that will beautifully illustrate my point. Stay tuned as this journey will be taking us to a Cabin Beneath The Stars!

This dramatic turn of events also opened a door that will allow me to chronicle a milestone year in my life through a quilt pattern I’ve been trying to find a project for, and I’ll get to do it while also learning about an iconic fabric line I’ve been super curious about. Put another way: I’ll be Stitching My Way To 50, thanks to Plains & Pine’s Temperature Quilt pattern, and a couple of Liberty Fabric bundles from DuckaDilly. I’m in the planning and prepping stage for this right now, but my “proof of concept” tests have been encouraging. This quilting adventure will start in just a couple of weeks.

And of course, there’s my Woodlands Creature Quilt. That’s what I’ve decided to call this 3-Yards Quilt project that unlocked the world of hand piecing for me. This quilt has taught me a couple of pretty important life lessons that I look forward to sharing more about, but those can wait until I have it finished. As I type this, I’ve finished the whole body of the quilt and I’ve begun adding the boarders. I’m hopeful I’ll have it completed within the next week or so.

As I said, it’s been an incredible 31 days. It’s a little bonkers to think about how I started these 100 Days working on one project that has been weighting on my heart for months, only to have three more quilt projects pop up and call to be worked on. Never fear, I’m not abandoning Jane Austen. I’m embracing an important lesson I learned from my personal literary pursuits: books have timing! Sometimes it’s just not the right moment in your life to read that particular book. Put into quilting terms: quilts have timing too! I needed that Jane Austen quilt to help me find this quilted path I’m now headed down, but it’s not time for me to finish it just now. I look forward to picking it up again in the future. Perhaps, I’ll do so for my next 100 Days.

I’m happy to share that I have returned to my writing, I have Episode 4 of the Hand Quilted Podcast ready to record, and with the start of my son’s soccer season, I’m back to quilting on the sidelines. So things are looking up for 2026, but admittedly they have been slowly looking up. I’ve been needing a big kick in the pants to fully shake myself out of the creative funk I’ve fallen into. That’s where an incredibly well timed peek at Substack yesterday delivered just the right nudge I needed to finish igniting my creative motivations.

Thank you, Jamie Gregory, for sharing your preparations for Lindsay Jean Thomson’s 100 Day Project. I love when serendipity comes out to play, and that’s exactly how reading your post felt! After reading about your preparations, I also spent yesterday preparing for the next 100 days. Recently I happened to have treated myself to Passion Planner’s Self-Care Gift Box, and it contained a little notebook that was exactly the right tool I needed to create my 100 day checklist, track my stitching progress, and even jot down a thought or two that I may want to keep track of over the next couple of months.

For these next 100 days, I will be working on my Jane Austen quilt from Riley Blake Designs, which was beautifully designed by Lori Holt. This quilt was created in honor of Jane Austen’s 250th birthday. I signed up for what is called a BOM, or Block of the Month, which means I purchased all the fabric, stencils, and pattern for this quilt, but instead of getting it all in one package, I am getting smaller bits of it every month for the course of the BOM. In this case, that will be over 10 months that started back in August. The idea is to take the larger project of making a quilt like this one, and chunking it down into smaller, more manageable pieces. It’s not uncommon to fall behind when it comes to putting together a BOM. At least it’s not uncommon for me! For those checking the calendar, month 7 just arrived, and I’m still working on the first month’s block.

So, for the next 100 days, I plan to spend a minimum of 20 minutes everyday stitching away on this very special quilt project. Lori Holt carefully designed this project to be done easily on a sewing machine, but I have elected to do this one by hand. Most of the quilt is done using a technique called appliqué, which can be done by hand or machine. I have committed to myself to do all of the appliqué by hand, and I’m very seriously considering doing all of the patchwork piecing by hand as well. However, that’s a much bigger commitment that I’m not completely sure I’m ready for. So my plan is to give it a try when I get to those steps and see how the process feels. I’m currently loving stitching machine free, but I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself.

The 100 Day Project starts today, and I will be sharing my progress through these next 100 days here on Substack, but while I will be tracking my daily progress in my notebook, I’m not sure of my best posting schedule. It’s a lot like that patchwork piecing portion of my Jane Austen quilt. I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself and commit to something that will become too overwhelming. When I get too overwhelmed I shutdown, and I know none of us what that.

So here we go, cheers to 100 days of creativity!

Episode 3: No Hoop, No Frame, No Limits

One of my earliest introductions to hand quilting came somewhere around the end of high school. One day I was at a friend’s house and I spotted what looked like a blanket wound up within this wooden contraption, but also kind of threaded through it in a manner that reminded me of a conveyor belt, that is if the conveyor belt was a few feet wide by about 18 inches deep, and stood 3 or 4 feet tall. When I asked my friend what this thing was, she said it was the quilt her mom was hand quilting. I had never known her mom to be a quilter, but I did know her to be fairly crafty, in all the good sort of ways, so I just accepted it and moved on.

A year or so after my friend and I graduated from high school, I found myself staying with her family for a short time, which allowed me the daily gift of walking by what I now know was a basted quilt secured on a quilting frame. I even have a hazy memory or two (it has been a couple of decades) of my friend’s mom sitting at her quilt hand stitching away. With what I had swirling around in my own personal life at that time, I did not have the capacity to inquire further about her quilt, her quilting experience, or that frame, but I think that was where my curiosity about quilting was first planted as a seed in the back corners of my heart.

When I think back on that time in my life, I can’t help but wonder if my quilting life would have changed at all had I asked my friend’s mom more questions about her quilt and her experiences with hand quilting. And what if I had learned more about that quilting frame and how to properly use it back then? Would that have made a difference and changed my relationship to hand quilting, or was I always destined to be so very different? Because, when I was finally able to tend to that seed of curiosity, and turned to quilting as the means to mend my broken heart, I very quickly discovered that for me any sort of quilting frame would be such a barrier!

Now granted, there are many different styles and sizes of quilting frames. As my friend’s mom’s frame illustrated, there is some degree of portability that can allow some frames to be stored and moved around with some degree of ease, but just about every frame I know of, including my friend’s mom’s, requires this concept of being fixed to quilting in one place, one room even. I’ve never had the room in my home for a quilting frame, nor have I had the desire to only quilt in one fixed space. The more I learned how to make those quilting stitches, the more I wanted to make them while out roaming the world.

Thankfully, for my fellow wandering quilters, there is another option: the quilting hoop. This dual ringed contraption can be used in place of a frame and allows for more quilting mobility, and it takes up much less space too. But despite what all of those YouTube videos say, it’s not that easy to learn how to use. At least it wasn’t for me. I figured out all the other things those videos told me I needed know in order to be a hand quilter: I could make a quilter’s knot in my thread, I could bury my knot between the layers of fabric, I could even load my quilt into my hoop leaving it taunt, yet “loose enough it looked as if a cat just slept in it.” But no matter how hard I tried, or how long I practiced, I simply could not master the art of rocking my needle up and down through the portion of my quilt secured inside that hoop, which is the motion needed to make any kind of quilting stitch.

I remember getting so frustrated and discouraged that I didn’t know what to do. This quilting thing wasn’t going as I had hoped. At least it wasn’t until that one day I needed something and went to my local quilt shop to get it.

I don’t remember what it was I needed, but as Martha, the owner of the shop, was ringing me up at the register that day, I happened to mention my frustrations with trying to hand quilt with a hoop. Martha then gave me the biggest quilting gift that anyone could have given me. It was so big and important that it would end up saving my quilting endeavors completely. She simply said to me, “then just don’t use a hoop!”

My goodness, talk about a solution that was so simple and so obvious! I can’t believe I didn’t think of it myself, and I especially don’t know why I needed Martha’s permission to abandon my efforts of trying to do something that wasn’t working, and instead to follow my own instincts and work in a manner my body found comfortable. Whatever those reasons were, I’m grateful she gave me such a simple and kind gift, and I’m ever so glad I listened to her!

After talking to Martha, I ditched the hoop, I never tried the quilting frame, and with one miserable exception mandated by absolute necessity, I’ve never looked back! I now just pile my quilt in my lap, and I use both of my hands to grasp the section of quilt I am quilting, to smooth and steady my fabrics as I go, and to guide my needle as I make all of my beautiful and imperfect quilting stitches.

As a result, I love how free and portable my life as a quilter has become. In a world consumed with ever advancing technologies, and a growing list of gadgets and gizmos we’re told we have to have, I quilt with the simplest and most basic of tools: a needle, some thread, a thimble, a pair of scissors, and a bit of beeswax to condition my thread. That’s it! I have a small pouch to keep it all in that permanently sits on the end table beside my favorite quilting chair in our living room. When it’s time to go out and quilt in the world, all I need to do is grab my current quilt-in-progress and my tool pouch, and then go! And let me tell ya, out into the world I have gone!

I have worked on my quilting in my neighborhood park while taking a much needed break from mommy-hood, and at the beach as my son had a special practice with his high school cross country team. I’ve taken my quilting to work on at many of my friends’ homes, during family gatherings, and while waiting for scout meetings to end. Some of my favorite quilting destinations have been our camping trips and adventures to Kings Canyon, Zion, and Yosemite National Parks, as well as that pandemic year we camped in Sequoia National Forest. I have sat on my back porch and quilted in the morning with my coffee at hand, and in the evening with my family gathered around our little fire pit enjoying the sunset. I have ventured with my quilting down by our pool to enjoy our garden view and watch our kids and dogs play. I have quilted in hotel rooms during numerous trips, in a train station waiting for my mom to arrive, and then on a train when it was my turn to go visit her. I have slipped away from the non-stop pace of a family Disneyland trip to savor a moment of quiet and beauty, and quilted in the lobby of Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel. I have taken up a couple of English paper piecing projects (commonly referred to as EPP) to work on during long car trips, and even on the plane last year when my husband made my life long wish to visit Paris come true.

And yet, my most common quilting destinations have involved my kids and their chosen activities. One of the things you’re not told about before becoming a parent is just how much time you will find yourself sitting around and waiting for your kid to finish living their best life. It’s handy to have something to do while you wait, and when that thing you have to do is hand quilting you get the added bonus of staying warm when it’s chilly outside. I learned this lesson thanks to my oldest son’s swim meets.

Let me tell ya, swim meets start early, last all weekend, and happen all year round! We may live in San Diego County, but February mornings are still really cold when you’re sitting outside by a pool on a Saturday watching the sun come up as your kid, his team mates, and all the other swimmers competing in the meet that day, begin swimming their pre-race warm ups. My hands may have been a bit cold, but I was always cozy and warm snuggled in my camping chair beneath whichever quilt I was working on that day while chatting with the other swim parents.

My husband and I are blessed with three boys who are three very different individuals following three very different paths through life. We are happy that we can support each of them in finding the activities they are interested in as they discover their individual passions in this world. Sure, logistically speaking, it would have been really nice if they could have chosen the same activities, or even slightly related activities that had practices and meetings next to each other and maybe even at the same time, but then if I was only ever sitting by the pool I wouldn’t have found myself chatting with so many lovely dance moms through the years, and watched as their dancers have grown beside mine.

My middle son has been a performer his whole life in one way or another. We first brought him to the dance studio when he was about 5 years old. I then sat back and watched in awe as he tried numerous dance styles before finding his passion for tap. It’s been 9 years since he first walked through the doors of a dance studio, and his love for tap has only grown. Through it all, I have passed many a hour sitting in a dance studio’s waiting areas just waiting for class to end. While my son and his fellow dancers spend that time repeatedly and diligently practicing one dance step or technique after another, I pass the time stitching away on my latest quilting project while marveling at how true to himself my kid is brave enough to be, especially as he has been navigating middle school these last couple of years in a town that primarily funnels its boys into sports and its girls into dance. Seriously, I want to be like him when I grow up!

And then we’ve got our youngest son. When faced with the options of either following his oldest brother into the pool, or his other older brother into the dance studio or onto the stage, our youngest son opted for the soccer field instead! Like I said, three very different individuals following three very different paths, but we love it! Our youngest son is only 9 years old as I write and record this part of our story, so he has a long way to go before fully committing himself to chasing that soccer ball around, but for however long he has us out along the sidelines of that soccer field, I’m going to cheer as loud as I can, and be ever so grateful I have a warm quilt to wrap up in during those cold nights at practice, and the lightweight EPP projects when the heat of our summer and fall temperatures bake our fields, which can even happen during our evening practice times in that part of the year.

Bringing my hand quilting out into the world is more than just staying warm and making progress on my stitching. I’m not just occupying my time; I’m also adding to the story and the life of that quilt. Max’s Monkey quilt was there with me at the pool in Fallbrook as his older brother got new best times in his swim meet and grew as a competitive swimmer. My cousin’s wedding quilt was there with me as I sat in the dance studio’s hallways, just outside of the classroom where my middle son fell in love with the art of tap dancing. My husband’s quilt has kept me warm, and helps keep the mosquitos off my legs, while I sit out in the elements watching our youngest son ignite his passion for soccer. And of course, there’s my Mystery Quilt that helped me survive our time in the NICU.

As I sit in so many different places and run my needle and thread through the layers of my quilts while adventuring out into the world, waiting for my kids as they discover their passions in life, or simply enjoying our little corner of the world in our own back yard, I am doing more than just making a blanket. I am stitching bits of these moments, places, and activities of our lives into these quilts that are intended to bring us warmth and comfort in the years ahead. I could never do that if I was chained to a machine or bound to a frame.

Thank you for joining me and sharing my hand quilting journey. The Hand Quilted Podcast is a Dragonfly & Poppy Production, which means it is written, recorded, and produced by me, Taniya Barrows, with music by Craig Riley, and logo design by Shelly Mullin. If you would like to see pictures of some of my favorite quilting destinations, you can find them on my website at www.handquiltedpodcast.com. While there, you can also find a transcript of today’s show, and subscribe to my Substack newsletter. All paid subscribers will have access to commercial free podcast episodes.

To see what I’m currently working on you can follow me on Instagram @handquilted, and on Facebook @HandQuiltedPodcast.

If you’d like to support the show you can do so by subscribing through whichever podcasting platform you use, sharing the podcast with your friends, or by subscribing to my newsletter at www.handquiltedpodcast.com.

And before I go, I’d like to thank my very first Patreon supporter: Patti Wohlin, who also happens to be my mom. Thanks mom!

Episode 2 - The Anatomy of a Quilt

My vision with this podcast is to share my quilting stories in a manner that is more story and less quilting, at least less of the technical side of quilting. My personal exploration within this craft is less about design and technique and more about simply making the stitches with my needle and thread. My aim for this podcast is to focus on how that simple act has impacted my life. I would also like for my stories to be accessible to those beyond the quilting community, and as such I’d like to make sure we all share a vocabulary and an understanding of the same vernacular. So, let’s pause from the storytelling for a moment and focus on building that shared language around quilts and quilting terminology, at least as I understand it and tend to use it.

I’d like to start with the sandwich itself as I believe the components of any quilting project are best illustrated in that phase of the quilt making process. That’s also the phase I spend the most time with and thus feel the most connected to, or maybe I’m just really hungry, either way let’s start with the sandwich.

Simply put, a quilt is made up of three layers of material that is often called the quilt sandwich.

To make the sandwich you start by making the quilt top, which is the fancy part of the quilt that is usually made from beautiful pieces of fabric that have been cut up into smaller bits of fabric just to be sewn back together again into a larger sheet of fabric that now features some sort of design or pattern thanks to all of those original smaller fabric bits.

I should take this moment to clarify that the act of sewing all these bits and pieces of fabric together is referred to as piecing. While I have been playing around with some hand piecing projects lately, I do primarily use my sewing machine to do my piecing, and I don’t anticipate that changing. I tend to get anxious to be done with all the piecing and putting together of a quilt, and my anxiety builds when I don’t have something at the ready to be hand quilted. So, when I’m making a new quilt top, my aim is always to hurry up and get done, that way I can get to the quilting part as quickly as possible. But we’ll talk about what that means in a minute.

Also, it should be shared that even though piecing bits of fabric together may be the more common way to make a quilt top, it’s not a requirement. There are some incredible whole cloth quilts out there. These quilts have a solid piece of fabric for the top that allows for the quilting stitches alone to make up the whole quilt’s pattern and design instead of fabric pieces doing that. I haven’t made a whole cloth quilt yet, but maybe someday.

Next up comes the batting, the meat of the sandwich, which is a kind of filler material typically made of cotton, wool, or polyester. The batting is kind of like the stuffing in a pillow, but instead of being big and puffy it’s flat and thin like a really think flannel sheet. When the batting is laid out, it is important to make sure it extends out beyond the edges of the quilt top, kind of like a fully loaded roast beef sandwich with the meat and lettuce and pickle and all that good stuff jutting out from underneath the top slice of bread.

And then there’s the backing, which is typically a single fabric pieced together, as needed, to make a large enough sheet of fabric that is slightly bigger than both the quilt top and that middle sheet of batting. To go back to my roast beef sandwich analogy, this sandwich would have a larger bottom slice of bread than the top slice, and this bottom slice would fully contain the meat and lettuce and pickle and all that good stuff within its crust boundary. All of this excess backing fabric and batting material is important to ensure that there is enough of each left over after all of the quilting has been finished.

When we’re dealing with quilts that are of the size that can be used in a blanket-like capacity, such as a comforter on a bed, or a throw for the couch, or the roof and walls of a blanket fort, these quilts are larger than the fabric’s width when that fabric is first purchased from the store, which is no problem! A quick bit of quilting math helps you figure out the yardage needed and then instead of cutting small pieces to sew together into a pattern, you cut really large pieces to sew together into one large sheet. The real trick to piecing the backing together is matching the fabric’s pattern so that those pieces that make up the backing look as if they have always been just one large sheet of fabric. That’s not exactly an easy thing to do, especially if there’s a distinct pattern on the fabric. I’ve only managed to do it twice so far, and it’s always the part of those quilts I’m most proud of and have to show off first!

Because the backings of these quilts typically need to be pieced together, it allows for extra bits of creativity for the quilter, and sometimes you’ll find they’ve added splashes of color, or carried design features from the top over to the back, or even discover a whole separate design. The backing of a quilt is limited only by the quilter’s imagination. Personally, for my quilts I like to use a single fabric with minimal design because I think my favorite part of a quilt’s backing is when it can highlight the pattern made by just the quilting stitches, a lot like a whole cloth quilt would. So, the next time you encounter a quilt, be sure to turn it over and take a moment to appreciate the back of it.

Okay, next up, we have the basting.

Once the quilt top and the backing are pieced together and the batting material is at hand, all three of these layers are laid out in their proper order, which is usually: backing, batting, and then top. And then congratulations, the quilt sandwich is made! But now in order to do anything with it, it must first be temporarily secured together in a process called basting. The basting can be done in a couple of ways.

There’s glue basting that uses a special adhesive applied to the batting as it is pressed onto the fabric of the backing, and then applied again as the quilt top is laid out on top of the batting. This helps it all stick together. Glue basting is kind of like using condiments on a sandwich, but instead of mayonnaise or mustard spread out between the bread and meat, this is a sticky glue that is safe to be used on fabrics.

There is also thread basting that involves sewing all three layers of the quilt sandwich together with very large stitches all across the quilt. I’m sorry, with this one I think I’m running out of food based analogies. I also don’t usually sew my actual sandwiches together, so I’ve really got nothin’ here.

Then you’ve got the process I use which is called pin basting where you use a whole bunch of safety pins spread out every few of inches or so across the whole quilt to hold all three layers together. I guess this would be kind of like using toothpicks to hold your sandwich halves together. And with that, I think I really am out of food based analogies now.

All of these basting methods are temporary, and the choice of which one to use is personal to each individual quilter. The important part is that they all accomplish the task at hand: secure the three layers of the quilt sandwich in place until the quilting process is completed.

The quilting process itself, often simply referred to as “quilting,” is the act of permanently sewing all three layers of the quilt sandwich together. This is done with a smaller, more intricate stitch than what is used in thread basting. These quilting stitches go across the whole quilt, from edge to edge, top to bottom. The quilting can be elaborate and decorative, or simple and plain, or any and everything in between. A general rule of thumb is to start your quilting stitches in the middle of the quilt and work your way out toward the edges. This allows for any adjustments to the layers of the quilt, if needed, and to help keep wrinkles from getting trapped within the stitches. However, as with all things quilting, there are many exceptions to this start-in-the-middle rule. I mention it primarily because it’s the way I tend to quilt my quilts.

And I’ve gotta tell ya, this step, this big, giant, what-makes-a-quilt-a-quilt step, the actual quilting process step is my favorite step to do by hand. It is why I quilt, why I have these stories to share, and why I’m making this podcast. However, it is also a step most commonly done with a machine, which is fine. There is nothing wrong, or bad, or better, or worse about machine quilting, it is simply not the way I quilt. But the reality of being the lone hand quilter around has made me evaluate why I do this. It has forced me to reconcile with what hand quilting continues to mean to me, and how it makes me different from the quilting community I find myself surrounded by. Thankfully, the more I reflect on my hand quilting, the more I love it and feel called to continue stitching away with my needle, thread, and thimble always at hand. But you know, while sometimes being different is just fine, there are other times it just feels lonely.

Unfortunately, even within the hand quilting community, I’ve kind of found my place a little bit on the outside of that group as well because I don’t make use of either a hoop or a frame when I quilt. I just hold everything in my lap and smooth everything out as I go. For me it works, and that’s the most important part of my quilting journey, and of anyone’s quilting journey. You’ve got to find what works for you! But, we should talk about those hoops and frames anyway because they are important quilting tools that I will be mentioning in episode three, and possibly periodically thereafter.

A hoop is little more than two circles (usually wooden) that fit snuggly together. The inside circle is solid, and the outside circle has a small opening secured with a screw so that it can be opened and closed, or rather loosened and tightened. To use it, take the two circles apart, lay the section of the basted quilt sandwich you’re working on across the smaller circle and secure it together with the top circle, tightening the screw closure as needed, and voilà! You’re now quilting with a hoop. There is a bit more nuance and technique to it than that, but I’m just here to explain the fundamentals. I do believe a quilt should only be in a hoop while its being actively worked on and then taken out of the hoop between quilting sessions to protect it from potential damage from prolonged time being squeezed in between the two parts of the hoop.

With a frame, a quilt can be loaded into it once and left there until it is finished. The frame itself is a larger contraption than a hoop. Depending upon the size and design of the frame, it will either fully frame a basted quilt sandwich, much like a picture frame does, or allow for it to be rolled up or otherwise secured in a manner that will protect it while it is being quilted a section at a time. For more information on hoops and frames, I will let you do your own research. I’m very much not the expert, and I have just given you all the information I have. A quick internet search will probably help you out from here more than I can.

The detail about both of these quilting tools that is important to know, is that they are used to hold all three layers of a quilt sandwich straight and even making it easier to complete a quilt without stitching wrinkles or bulges or any sort of extra fabric into the finished product. Since I don’t use these items, I do have to be more mindful about what’s happening with the various layers of fabrics and materials within my quilt sandwich while I’m quilting it. As a result, I am often smoothing, pulling, and straightening all of my fabrics and layers, and readjusting my safety pins, which is part of why I like to use the pin basting method.

An interesting quilting tidbit I learned kind of the hard way somewhere in the middle of my third quilt is that the act of quilting actually shifts the fabrics and can shrink the overall size of the quilt. It doesn’t shrink it a whole lot, but remember that part I mention earlier about needing the batting and backing to be larger than the quilt top? Yeah, this is why. When that needle and thread goes up and down through the three layers, it pulls everything together just an itty-bitty bit closer and secures it in place. Over the course of a couple of stitches it isn’t really a big deal, but when you consider how many quilting stitches there are over the entirety of a quilt then that itty-bitty bit of shrinkage that happens with each and every stitch can become enough shrinkage to impact the alignment of all three layers of the quilt sandwich out at the edges. And that is why it’s important to keep the bottom two layers of the quilt sandwich a few inches bigger than the top. Once all the quilting is done, then everything is trimmed up nice and neat and even before the final binding is put on.

The binding is an exciting step to reach because it’s the last step in making a quilt. The binding is a long strip of fabric folded around the edges of a quilt and sewn into place, sealing up that open edge of the sandwich and protecting the insides and edges from a lifetime of wear and use.

Does that now turn our sandwich into a pie? Hmm . . . I don’t know, but I think I’m hungry again.

Anyhow, I like to think of the binding as the frame being put around the finished piece of work.

Fun little plot twist here, I will typically use my machine for the whole process of sewing on the binding, because at this point I’m anxious to be done and move on to my next quilt, while I’ve known many a machine quilter to do the final step of this binding process by hand. Go figure!

The finishing touch to completing any quilt is adding the label. Not every quilter will use a label, but if they do, it’s usually placed in a corner on the back of the quilt. Quilt labels typically contain the standard who, what, where, and why kind of information surrounding the making of the quilt. An example would be, “Made with love by Aunt Susie, Merry Christmas, 2024.” However, I struggle with labeling my quilts with so few words.

For me, after I’ve spent years stitching away on a quilt - and yes, that was “years,” plural! - it’s hard for me to simply leave it at “Made by Taniya, finished this year.” By the time I have finished quilting a quilt and I am preparing a label to attach to it, that quilt has already been loved and incorporated into my family for at least a couple of years. That quilt will have been taken to countless dance classes and soccer practices and swim meets and family vacations and even a writing retreat or two. That quilt has spent years being a part of our family evenings at home, unwinding at the end of a day, snuggled in for family movie nights, hunkered down inside during rain storms, and all of the other important, mundane moments in our everyday lives. Therefore, how, I ask you, after completing a quilt that has already been through so much with me and my family, do I simply say “Made with love, finished today?” I can’t. I just can’t! So when I make a label for the backs of my completed quilts, I tend to write a little story capturing at least a small part of the lives my quilts have already lived whilst between my needle, thread, and thimble.

Thank you for pausing with me and taking the time to review the anatomy of a quilt. I hope this has been helpful in decoding a bit of the language used within the quilting world, and that it will allow for everyone to enjoy the stories I have to share about my hand quilting journey.

The Hand Quilted Podcast is written, recorded, and produced by me, Taniya Barrows, with music by Craig Riley, and logo design by Shelly Mullin. If you would like to see pictures of some of my quilts in the various stages I’ve been talking about, you can find them on my website at www.handquiltedpodcast.com. While there, you can also find a transcript of today’s show, and subscribe to my Substack newsletter. All paid subscribers will have access to commercial free podcast episodes.

To see what I’m currently working on you can follow me on Instagram @handquilted, and on Facebook @HandQuiltedPodcast.

If you’d like to support the show you can do so by subscribing through whichever podcasting platform you use, sharing the podcast with your friends, or by subscribing to my newsletter at www.handquiltedpodcast.com.

And before I go, I’d like to thank my very first supporter: Patti Wohlin, who also happens to be my mom. Thanks mom!

Episode 1: My Quilting Origin Story

It wasn’t the first time I held a needle, nor was it my first quilting effort, but it was the moment my quilting journey began all the same. It happened one evening in the fall of 2014. I was sitting on the couch in our living room, watching TV with my family, when I suddenly turned to my husband and declared, “Okay honey, I’ve got it! I’m going to try quilting and yoga!” To which my incredibly supportive husband simply replied with an enthusiastic, “Okay!”

This happened at a moment in my life when I needed a change, but I didn’t know what kind of change I needed. It was the kind of moment that comes in the wake of devastation, grief, and rejection. A little over a month earlier, I had suffered a sudden loss that utterly destroyed me, but it wasn’t the kind of loss that is often spoken of, or even acknowledged as significant within our cultural references, which only increased my isolation in the moment, and the magnitude of my emotional devastation. I’m not going to go into the details of my loss because they aren’t necessary. Aside from the fact that it happened and therefore I was devastated, none of those details pertain to my quilting story. My quilting story is all about the aftermath of my loss, because even though nobody died, and my marriage and family were strong and healthy, my heart had still been ripped apart and shattered, and a lot like Humpty Dumpty, I had no idea how to put myself back together again, but I was trying.

My husband knew how deeply I had been hurt, and how badly I was suffering. He also knew how hard I was struggling to climb my way out of that horrific, emotional crater that had consumed me. Unfortunately, as is the way with these things, he couldn’t make everything better himself. All he could really do was be there for me; supporting me in whatever I wanted to try, even if that meant he would need to assume all the kid duties a few nights a week, or simply resist the urge to ask how much that pile of fabric cost.

I’m happy to say that quilting ended up being the key to making things better. Due to simple logistics, it was the first part of my make-things-better plan that I tried. After all, it was easier and more convenient to hop in my car and head over to my local quilt shop the very next morning than it was to find a local yoga class that even kind of fit into our family schedule. Sadly, a decade on, I still haven’t found that yoga class, but I have completed four hand quilted quilts, with my fifth - and largest - nearing completion, and a sixth recently, and hastily, started just for me.

While I may have found a desire and motivation to learn how to quilt that fateful fall evening in 2014, that doesn’t mean I had any history or real connection to the craft before then. The closest I ever came was working with a colleague who happened to be a quilter. I’m honored to say that just before I left that job she and I shared, she gifted my husband and me a small quilt she made for us as a baby shower gift right before our middle son was born. Aside from that, I’d only had a couple of other tangential quilting encounters in my life, none of which would have taught me anything about the fundamentals of quilt making. If I was going to do this, I was going to have to figure it out on my own.

The best of circumstances may have had me jumping straight into a beginner’s quilting class, or possibly seeking out new friends at my local quilt shop, or even reaching out to that former colleague of mine whom I had lost touch with over the years. But to do any of that, I needed to be in a much stronger, more socially compatible state. Instead, when I started my quilting journey, I was too hurt, and too emotionally broken to put myself out in any sort of social manner. I sought the act and craft of quilting because I could do it at home, alone, safely curled up on my couch. Had I managed to find that yoga class, I’m confident it would have been a good fit because while it would have gotten me out of the house and into the world with other people around, it’s also an activity that is intended to draw your focus inward and calm the mind, not spend a whole hour chatting and socializing. It would have been okay for me to simply be quiet and present in a yoga class, but seeking a quilting tutor or mentor would have required a lot more social interaction than I was ready to engage in at the time.

Thankfully, I wasn’t starting entirely from scratch. As a young child, my mom had taught me how to sew using a needle and thread, and how to use that needle to make a quilters knot at the end of my thread. I don’t remember why, or what kind of project or task brought about the need or opportunity to teach me this, but I’ve never forgotten it, and have always been grateful for the knowledge. I’ve found it to be a useful life skill I’ve used many times throughout the years. I also benefited from having taken my middle school’s “Cooking and Sewing” elective class in the eighth grade. Thanks to my incredible teacher, Mrs. Garrigues, I learned key sewing fundamentals such as, how to thread and operate a sewing machine, how to wind and load a bobbin, what the hell a bobbin is, and - most importantly - how to sew a straight line. We did lots of different kinds of projects in Mrs. Garrigues’s class that year, but they were all either garment or pillow making related. Thankfully, those bare basics she taught us stayed with me over the decades, and would became the foundation of my quilting skills.

Also, I had tried a couple of quilt making attempts a few years earlier, but both of those efforts left me disillusioned and frustrated. Although, I do have to admit that first effort of mine did produce something my kids love. It was from a kit I bought from a large fabric and craft retailer that was labeled as everything you needed to make a baby quilt, and I guess it falls under a technical definition of a quilt with a top, a back, a something sandwiched in between, and then it was run through my sewing machine to sew all three layers together, but I still attest that that thing was more of a pillow and less of a quilt. Yet, it is a testament to the love infused into the things we make. My kids still love it to this day because mom made it, and I tolerate its presence because my kids love it.

Okay, so, I know what you’re thinking: I’ve identified myself as a hand quilter, and I’ve even titled this podcast “Hand Quilted,” yet here I am talking about sewing machines and bobbins and machine quilting that pillow-like-quilt-thing. What gives, Taniya?

Yeah, I know, but we all start somewhere, and I started with a sewing machine. In fact, I still use my sewing machine. I do prefer to machine piece most of my quilt tops because it means my quilts make it to that ready-to-be-quilted state faster. I am working on a very special forest and flower themed EPP quilt (that stands for English Paper Piecing, but the way) that I am attempting to do entirely by hand, but that’s an ongoing story I’m sure I will be sharing about many times in the coming years before that quilt is finished. Anyhow, generally speaking, my thimble comes out once I’ve fully completed the assembly of the whole quilt sandwich, meaning I’m ready to start the actual quilting step. I will then happily spend the next few years with my needle, thread, and thimble hand quilting away. The reality is, I am a quilter primarily so that I can spend my time working on this penultimate step in the quilt making process (the binding being the final step). For me, spending my time rocking my little needle back and forth, guiding it up and down through those three layers of fabric and material, and following a pattern that I hope will result in highlighting the beauty of the quilt top I made, became the secret to stitching my heart back together when I was in that deep, dark place of hurt.

But alas, to fully bridge that divide between my sewing machine and thimble I must make a bit of a confession that may get a few of my fellow bibliophiles who love to stay true to the source material a little perturbed, but hang in there with me friends, and let me explain!

When I started quilting, I didn’t have a full understanding of how one went about making a quilt, nor did I have a guide or mentor to help me sort any of it out. All I really had were assumptions and fantasies about sewing that I kind of semi-erroneously attributed to the March sisters, Jane Eyre and her few friends, and even to the Bennet sisters, believe it or not. I know quilting wasn’t featured in the plot lines of any of their stories, but all the same, I had these images in my head that were inspired by books like *Little Women*, *Jane Eyre,* and *Pride and Prejudice,* where women would pass their pre-televised-computerized-smart-phone-filled hours by sewing a garment, or darning a sock, or working on some kind of needlework project secured in a hoop, and I thought that sounded like a lovely way to spend ones time. Okay, maybe not the darning of socks part, but the always having some kind of stitching project at hand that could be picked up or turned to in the quiet of the evening, or to seek solace under when life gets hard or complicated or overwhelming.

Yeah, I know that’s a rather romanticized view of sewing, quilting, or any kind of needlework fictionally done in ages past, but in that hard, complicated, overwhelming moment in my life, I needed that romanticized filter. I needed that image in my head of a woman just like me peacefully sitting in a favorite corner and stitching away at some big piece of fabric in her lap. In my grief and devastation, that sounded cozy and warm and safe.

So, I began to quilt. As I stumbled my way through the piecing, layering, and basting of my first quilt, and then learning how to bury my knots and make something resembling evenly spaced quilting stitches, I began to find genuine solace in the peaceful, meditative, repetitive nature of making each of those hand quilted stitches. It took time, practice, and an unexpected comment from a quilt shop owner that gave me permission to be my own quilter, and to quilt in the manner that worked best for me, before I could fully settle into my thimble, but once I did I’ve never looked back!

The unexpected part of all of this quilting, has been the life lessons and patchwork metaphors I’ve discovered along the way. It sounds cheesy and corny and as cliche as you can get, I know, but it has also been undeniable. I started quilting as a busy mom with young kids, which meant there was very little space in any of my days for a time consuming activity like quilting. Thankfully, my purpose for picking up my needle was to focus on making each of those little stitches and had nothing to do with finishing anything quickly, but I was always surprised (and I still am) by how much progress is made with a whole bunch of short quilting sessions. Slow and steady really does win the race even when you’re taking it one step - and one stitch - at a time!

As a creative writer, this discovery spoke to me on all of those literary and metaphorical levels my college professors trained me to appreciate, and I’ve sought to *stitch* them into my writing wherever I can. (You see what I did there? Sorry, couldn’t resist!) Anyway, a couple of years ago it occurred to me that I could venture away from my fiction writing comfort zone and stretch myself within the realm of memoir by writing about my quilts, my quilting journey, and all of these life lessons I keep stumbling upon. At first, I thought I’d share my stories in blog form, because I believe any story about quilting should include pictures, but as an avid podcast listener, and an aspiring podcaster who got derailed because of the pandemic, I reconsidered and the *Hand Quilted* *Podcast* was born! Never fear, I still have a website you can visit to see all of those quilting pictures.

Stretching myself as a writer wasn’t my only motivation to share my hand quilting journey. I also wanted to work on this writing and podcasting project because, as a hand quilter, I have struggled to find my hand quilting community. All of the quilters I know are dedicated machine quilters. I love all of my quilting friends, and I’m even lucky enough to have a couple of very special quilting sisters I connect with monthly to work on a shared project together, but being the lone hand quilter among them can get a bit lonely at times.

Hand quilting brings a pace and relationship to quilting that is different when you remove the sewing machine. Let me be clear, hand quilting is not better than machine quilting, it’s simply different. It comes with different tools, different stitches, different needs, and a different focus than what machine quilting calls for. Because of this, not having someone I can share my hand quilting observations or experiences or questions with can be isolating even when I’m surrounded by the love and camaraderie that can be found within just about any quilting circle.

There’s also all of those, “Wow, I could never do that!” kind of comments I get whenever I take my hand quilting out into the world. I understand the sentiment and surprise at seeing me do something so few people do anymore, and I appreciate the admiration that usually follows, but over the years I’ve begun to feel the weight of those comments. After almost a decade of hand quilting out in the world, I have yet to encounter anyone who has come up to me to tell me that they *also* hand quilt. Instead, the vast majority of the comments I get relate to disbelief over what I’m doing, an insistence that they could never possibly do it themselves, and a hyper focus on the number of hours I must have spent working on whatever project I happen to have in my lap. While I understand that these comments are being said through a moment of shock and surprise, and that we as humans aren’t always fabulous about filtering our comments said in a moment of shock and surprise, after hearing them for the better part of a decade, these comments have begun to feel isolating and othering, and have left me feeling completely misunderstood, especially when somebody attempts to estimate how many hundreds of hours I must have already spent working on a quilt.

It’s not about keeping track of the time, and it’s not about doing the impossible or unfathomable. As I’ve already shared, when I hand quilt it’s about healing and comfort and security. I would love to add community to that list, and so here I am, sharing my journey in hopes of countering all of the disbelievers and time keepers, and maybe inspiring a new hand quilter or two. I have no delusions that this little, independently produced podcast of mine will change the world and bring upon a giant wave of hand quilting, but you never know. I am hoping that whatever size ripple I can make, it will bring about a deeper appreciation, and maybe even a bit of inspiration, for this incredible craft of hand quilting.

Thank you for joining me and sharing my hand quilting journey. The Hand Quilted Podcast is written, recorded, and produced by me, Taniya Barrows, with music by Craig Riley, and logo design by Shelly Mullin. If you would like to see pictures of that pillow-like-quilt-thing my kids love so much, you can find them on my website at www.handquiltedpodcast.com. While there, you can also find a transcript of today’s show, and subscribe to my Substack newsletter. All paid subscribers will have access to commercial free podcast episodes.

To see what I’m currently working on you can follow me on Instagram @handquilted, and on Facebook @HandQuiltedPodcast.

If you’d like to support the show you can do so by subscribing through whichever podcasting platform you use, sharing the podcast with your friends, or by subscribing to my newsletter at www.handquiltedpodcast.com.

And before I go, I’d like to thank my very first supporter: Patti Wohlin, who also happens to be my mom. Thanks mom!

Episode transcripts and pictures can be found at: www.handquiltedpodcast.com

Instagram: @handquilted

Facebook: @HandQuiltedPodcast

Transcript:

Hello, I’m Taniya Barrows, and I can’t wait to welcome you to the Hand Quilted Podcast! In this new podcast launching on February 12th, 2025, I will be sharing my personal journey as a self-taught hand quilter.

When I started quilting, back in the fall of 2014, I had no idea what I was doing, but I was determined to figure it out. Along the way, I saw the importance of perseverance, found the beauty of imperfection, and discovered the protective comfort of curling up within a hand made quilt, even if it isn’t finished yet.

I was surprised by how many of these life lessons were hiding within the folds of all that fabric. And now, after a decade of stitching away with my needle, thread, and thimble, I have created the Hand Quilted Podcast as my attempt to share some of those life lessons with the world.

I should also mention that I’m a creative writer who loves to tell stories, and I’m a self-taught podcaster doing this entirely by myself. That means, I’m taking my time to write each episode in a manner similar to a chapter in a memoir, and then recording, editing, and producing it all by myself. In many ways, this podcasting journey has been a similar adventure to my quilting endeavors. Admittedly, that will result in episodes that are released at a slower, and probably a more irregular interval, than many other podcasts, but I hope you will find each episode worth the wait.

I look forward to having you join me on my hand quilting (and podcasting) journey starting on February 12th. Until then, be sure to follow the Hand Quilted Podcast on your favorite podcasting platform so you don’t miss when episodes 1 and 2 are formally launched together!