Sewing With Nancy

Many years ago, I picked up a book entitled "The Quilter's Apprentice" by an unknown author. It was the first book for this author and I read it cover to cover. I thought it was fascinating. Someone had combined fiction and relationships with stitching, one quilt at a time. Little did I know that I'd come to know this author and soon be interviewing her on my TV show. Welcome back Jennifer Chiaverini for her 18th book. "The Wedding Quilt" what a wonderful, charming story. It intertwines, interweaves, past experiences and future. That's right. This book really does tie into the first one you read. With Sarah. Right, Sarah was the bride in the first novel. Now she's the mother of the bride. Right, we do leap into the future a little bit in "The Wedding Quilt." We get to see Sarah oh, about 30 years after she first came to Elm Creek Manor and launched that wonderful quilter's retreat Elm Creek Quilts. All of the family friends, and Elm Creek quilters past and present have gathered in order to celebrate this very, very special occasion of the wedding of Sarah's daughter Caroline. Now, fictional Sarah never had a wedding quilt. No, she did not because there weren't any quilters in the family. When she got married it was before she learned to quilt herself. Her first quilt was a gift for her husband to celebrate an anniversary. But she wants to make sure that her daughter has a wedding quilt of her own. We don't want to give too much of the story away but I love the way you bring characters from the past books and as you said, look into the future then also bring in the element of quilting. That's absolutely true. Of course, at Elm Creek Quilts with all of these quilters gathered together for such a momentous occasion in the life of a family quilters always make sure that there are quilts to make and quilts to give as gifts. Part of the process and then part of the gift is in the giving. You have two quilts featured in this book. Let's talk about them. In "The Wedding Quilt" I always do like to make the quilts that my characters make in the story because it's fun for me. Then it's also fun for my readers to see. One of the quilts in the story is a double wedding ring. But it departed a little bit from the traditional pattern in that it has some beautiful floral appliqus in the center of each of the rings. Very charming, and the color combinations that you have the roses and forest greens blend together so well. I thought it would be a nice combination for a bride's quilt. It is very nice. Then, there's the memory quilt. That's right, the memory album quilt. This is a quilt that Caroline is not going to receive on her wedding day because it is still in progress. Sarah has decided to depart from the double wedding ring tradition and make a quilt that is sort of a wonderful memento of the wedding weekend itself. So what she does is she takes a traditional album block pattern called the memory album and she and her friends when Caroline is busy doing other things they go around with fabric prepared for signatures and special pens. They have all the wedding guests sign these pieces of fabric. On the sly. They don't want to spoil the surprise for either the bride or the groom. Then, after collecting all these wonderful messages and good wishes and congratulations she and her friends plan to stitch them all together in a beautiful quilt that would be a wonderful keepsake of that really special day. You've brought one of the rectangles. Yes, that's right, what I like to do-- I find that it doesn't work very well to give someone a loose piece of fabric with no stabilization. So what I like to do is take the fabric that you're going to sign, or have your participants sign, and I like to iron it to freezer paper. Sure. I usually start with a page that's about the size of an 8-1/2" x 11" sheet of paper. Then I trim it down to the size of the piece in the pieced block including the seam allowance. Then you've masked out the seam allowance, very smart. Absolutely. This is 1/4" tape, it's good for marking quilts. I don't worry about putting it flush to the edge. In fact, I put it in a little bit just to give me that extra allowance. Then you give a boundary to the message, the signature. Exactly, I can tell people especially if someone's not a sewer if I say. "Don't write in the seam allowance" that might be unfamiliar terminology. So instead, I say, "Stay within the tape and you'll be in good shape." Well, someone can make a memory album quilt for a wedding or an anniversary. A graduation. But they really should get a nice little story behind it. This is charming, as all of your books are. Thank you. Thank you for being a prolific author. My pleasure. And writing about a topic that's dear to many of us. Jennifer, I appreciate you being our guest. It's my pleasure, thank you. You can find out more about all of Jennifer's books

by going to our website

nancyzieman.com At the site, click on Nancy's Corner and then the 2600 series. You can find Jennifer's information. Also at nancyzieman.com you'll be able to watch online videos, video on demand of the last 52 shows of Sewing with Nancy. Thank you for watching us, watching our program. Jennifer, again, thank you for being our guest. Hope you'll join us again. Bye for now.