Carli The Quilter

Let's celebrate International Women's Day! With a conversation about what each of us can do to reuse more from clothing, instead of giving it to a thrift shop. This past weekend,  it was a sunny day, but bitterly cold with a cross wind that took your breath away. I drove the crunching driveway to the home of Eve Rippel. I first met Eve back in 2004 when I taught a quilting class with re-purposed fabrics from clothing like denim, corduroy or other re-purposed fabric.  Eve was a breath of fresh air and still is some 10 years later. While others in the class were confused with how to actually harvest usable fabric from clothing, she was helping with this idea by just getting onto the whole subject. I think that this year I'd like to impress upon each you to do more to recycle clothing into something or anything interesting or useful. Eve with her latest great grand baby quilt. Eve's Mom taught Eve to sew during the 1930's in Saskatchewan, when ...

Have you heard of the Story of Stuff? I'm having a  blast going through all sorts of things in my studio and on my old computer, just to be 100% sure that everything has been transferred to my new Christmas present. I found this and thought it to very poignant reminder that all things go around and sometimes that go around is just a reminder that we all need to make some significant changes in what we buy, what we throw away and how can we all have a novel way to tell others about it. Please visit the web site and founder of The Story of Stuff. My own quiet moment of realizing that I too, have a footprint on this earth as we all do and this helps me to realize the insanity of collecting stuff. Got to Love it, Carli

Last weekend, our crafting club held our 1st. Annual Re-Crafting Fair in Telkwa. Our mission was to educate locals and far away visitors about the many ways we've experimented to reuse textiles into new items. Reusing is an important task that all of us should be doing as often as possible.    We are just a small group of crafters who feel that our local communities and our local government need help in learning about this reality. We have a large number of people still throwing things into a Re-Use Shed with no one to care for these items on an ongoing basis. Consequently, we've learned that about twice a week, the workers drive a small bobcat front loader into the building and simply discard the clothing into the Knockholt Landfill that is about 45 km's away southeast of Houston, B.C.  We feel this is wrong. Education about 'how to reuse everything' needs to be done. We aim to educate everyone, including our local government. This blog posting docume...

 In 1997 I began thinking about writing a book. By this time I'd had so many interesting experiences with quilting with recycled cotton harvested from shirts and dresses, I'd become quite good at it! This little pillow above is one and you can see the beginnings of a modern quilter with all that abstract negative space. But that darned addiction of mine to crazy quilting began sending me off in all directions! But still my need to express myself with different ideas about quilting took me back and forth for the most of the last decade! OMG I'm dating myself, but oh so what, anyone can find me on Google if they really have a burning desire to know more about me. My desire to express innovative ways to reuse kept me on track for becoming a modern quilter. I didn't even know what a blog was in 2003 when this Butterfly Ring took shape on a scrap of graph paper. I was deep into learning about blogs when in the summer of 2008, our little hamlet had two dev...

I make my own templates. Its quite simple, trust is involved and careful storage of similar sized templates are essential. As you know from reading my blog, I like to be frugal with supplies and tools. I used the cardboard above decades ago and I still have it. I didn't have a template in the beginning. So I made my own. You start with making a straight line on cereal board. Placing a quilting ruler with the 60 degree line on the drawn straight line. Then draw a line upwards away from the original line. Repeat on the other side. Its your decision to decide what size of fan template you want?  In this photo above, you can see that I used a fabric fan piece to assist you in your fan development.  Here I used a template from a magazine wedge that I modified to fit my size of fan. This is a simple way to use something already made. You can even take another dresdent fan apart to discover the size of a finished plate. Its up to you. This is my sto...