Welcome to my little corner of the internet. I love making and designing quilts! The colors and textures of quilting have helped in my personal journey of self-healing. This medium is very underrated as an art form. There are so many aspects to creating a quilt. After picking a design, or creating your own, you have to do lots of math and planning. Then you cut and prepare all the fabric pieces, which includes decision making in fabric prints. After that there is the pieicing work where you sew all the little pieces of fabric together. The quilt needs a batting (filling) and a backing… more choices. Then the actual quilting takes place where all three layers are stitched together with a stitching pattern that is intended to accent the patchwork. After all that, a small edging piece is sewn around all the edges called a binding.
When I first started quilting, I was turned onto EPP (English Paper Piecing) and hexies and my love for hand-pieced quilts began. Hand-piecing quilts is very time-consuming – even a small quilt can easily take me 500+ hours if done by hand. Because of my desire to have more quilt finishes, I also use a machine to piece some quilts. Recently I added a longarm machine to my studio, so currenly I’m practicing my longarm skills. My quilt portfolio can be seen here.
Hand sewing is particularly soothing for me. But all my quilting takes on a healing nature. My background is one of extreme religion, homelessness, abuse and betrayal. With CPTSD, I struggle greatly with physical and emotional well-being. I process many intense emotions through my quilting. Each and every quilt I create has a back-story, even if I keep some parts of my narrative private. I write a lot about my mental process in this blog. It’s extremely rewarding to be able to create something beautiful with my own two hands.
I’m so happy you found me here – Happy Quilting!
-Gail Lizette Weiss
