More Quilted Words

After the post I did about my recent Fruit of the Spirit quilt, Margit sent me a photo of a quilt she made with words on it. I met Margit Kagerer while visiting my friend Evelyn in Arizona years ago, and have admired her work ever since. This is what she wrote to me: “I free motion quilted the Gettysburg address into Lincoln’s profile. The quilt was shown at the Houston show in 2024. I did many quilts with text, mostly poetry.”

WOW! Thanks for sending the photo of your quilt Margit!

After getting her email it occured to me that words have played an important part in the quilt world for quite a while. I have fabric printed with words that I’ve collected over the years, and in the past decade they’ve become even more popular ~ and readily available. I’ve been especially intrigued by the fabrics of Tim Holtz in recent times (click here to see some of his fabric ~ and be inspired). My collection of wordy fabric includes some with quilt phrases, patriotic themes, Scripture, etc.

As I mentioned in last week’s post, I’ve even written a book on educational quilts for kids that’s all about words ~ and my technique for making them without fusible web so they stay soft and snuggly. This was my first Snuggle and Learn quilt. I made it for my granddaughter Hanna 18 years ago.

Another kids quilt I designed using Repliqué was the Critter Quilt. It was fun to put the words inside the animals.

I’ve put words on quilts in many different ways over the years. When my nephew Adam was little he was really into fish and he asked me to make him a quilt. I was fairly new to quilting, but it sounded like fun. I found a pattern for the fish blocks and scattered them on a blue background. When I began the free motion quilting I realized the space to fill was large, and my attention span short. So my quilter’s ADD set in and I decided to “write” on the quilt in thread to fill some of the space. On the back of the following photo (please excuse the quality of the photo ~ it’s old 😊) I wrote the story: “At Thanksgiving Adam asked me to make a quilt with fish on it. I made this for his Christmas gift. He loved it! Among various other designs in the meander quilting I included “Adam’s Fish Quilt”, “Made with love by Aunt Chris”, the names of his siblings and cousins, and “Christmas 1989”.

Here’s the best detail photo I have of the quilting. I think you can make out “Adam”, but the rest are not as obvious.

Since then I often write messages and Scripture verses in the borders of the wedding and baby quilts I make for family and friends.

On a few gift quilts I’ve included names in appliqué, as on this one I made for my niece Kaitlin’s wedding shower:

The next one has been in a number of my lectures. It’s called “How Beautiful ~ Liberty”, and it’s one of my Accordian Door quilts. That means it’s made from three quilts: two are cut into vertical slices, sewn together, and hung on the third quilt with Velcro™. So there is a different view from the left and from the right. This is the view from the right. The base quilt words were made with a Brother Scan and Cut™, fused in place, and then stitched down with the quilting.

Have you made a quilt with words you’d like to share? Please send photos to: .