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Tags: daily, quilting supplies, quilting patterns, dan, beginner quilting, quilting fabric

Pam Houghtby explains how she combined these colorful materials in her quilt, which is featured in the current issue of Quilt Magazine. Her quilt is displayed at the Hickory Stick, where kits composed of all the materials needed to make it are available. Pam Houghtby made her first quilt only four years ago, after not doing any sewing since her high school home economics class in 1962. She has since become so enthused about her new hobby that she submitted two quilts to Quilt Magazine, and one is featured in the current issue. The article is in the August/September issue, which is for sale at local stores, including the Hickory Stick, where her featured quilt is currently displayed. So she sent Quilt Magazine a picture of the quilt, which she described as a star pattern and the Irish chain.

Barbara Houshmand explains the different parts of her memorial quilt, inspired by the Mexican holiday The Day of the Dead. Near Barbara Houshmand’s bedroom, in her home halfway between Sequim and Port Angeles, hangs a quilt that serves as a memorial to all her deceased relatives — her parents, brothers and sisters, an aunt. Houshmand said she did a whole collection of quilts revolving around the early November Mexican holiday Day of the Dead, El Día de los Muertos in Spanish, which honors those who are deceased. Houshmand, who said she’s been quilting in some form for her entire life, said she does more “artistic” quilts, rather than “traditional” quilts, where the maker follows specific patterns that all quilters use. Since inspiration simply comes to her, Houshmand’s collection of quilts is varied — some look like contemporary paintings, sparse and artistic, others are made of silks from Italy and still others are created from fabrics she dyes herself. Apparently others thought so as well — “Ladder-Day Saints” was accepted into both the Sunbonnet Sue Quilt Club’s annual show as well as the biennial Pacific Northwest Quiltfest being held in Seattle in August.

An eye-popping display of quilts in downtown Alamosa during the Sixth Annual San Luis Valley Quilt Adventure offered a spectacle of color. Following the Quilt Adventure that ended on July 11, the Fourth Annual Quilt Show of the SLV Quilt Guild will be at the Inn of the Rio Grande, July 19-20, and there also will be a quilt auction on July 13 at the Catholic Church in La Jara to benefit the hospital and Meals on Wheels. Traditional in design but remarkably intricate and beautiful in execution is a quilt by Judith Freeark of Alamosa that appears in an engagement calendar called Quilt Art, available at Gray Goose. In the 1800s, quilting bees, with large work mounted on frames in church basements and grange halls, became popular with women sharing their labor, although an old joke claims that quilting bees just gave women something to do with their hands while they talked.