Interview With Barbara Persing

The speaker at our guild's June meeting was Barbara Persing. Barbara has a new book that was just published called "Listen To Your Quilt".  (I love the quilt on the cover.)

 Barb is also a member of our guild.  What I find so amazing that this Spring 3 of the members of Calico Cutters Quilt Guild have had books published - Barb, Lisa O'Neill ("Sliver Quilts") and moi (as Miss Piggy would say).  To me, this shows the power of belonging to a guild.  Guild meetings become a place to empower, encourage and inspire each other.

"Listen To Your Quilt" is all about choosing a quilting design or designs for your quilt.  We can all use this help.  She gives a 4 step process that involves choosing a category for your quilt, a style and an intended purpose.  The last step is choosing the best thread color.  It really helps to simplify  the choice of a quilting design. 

Barbara has a long arm business and she has quilted everything from traditional quilts to art quilts.  She has exhibited and won awards at such nationally prestigious quilt shows as  The International Quilt Festival in Houston. You've got to know that you can learn something from her.

One of her newer pieces created by painting with ink.

She was generous enough to answer a bunch of my questions.
What is your favorite part of quilting? I love designing new quilts and choosing fabrics.  If by "quilting" you mean the actual quilting on my machine... I would say I still love the challenge of deciding on what quilting designs and thread color to use. Then seeing how it all comes together in the finished quilts.

Do you have a favorite color? I don't have a favorite color but I do prefer bright clear colors.

How long have you been making quilts? I have been making quilts for 30 years.

You currently have video lessons on The Quilt Show website. What was it like to film that? I am not comfortable in front of a camera and in the video lessons I have no one to "chat" with. For me that was very hard to do. I didn't feel natural.

Your sister is also a quilter. Is there quilting in your family history? Not so much a quilting history but a sewing history. Our mom taught me and my 4 sisters garment construction. Our mother is an amazing seamstress and she passed her love of sewing onto us. Mary and I are the only quilters but all my sisters sew.

I love your "Sampler". It's the quilt on the cover of your book. How many different hand dyed fabrics are there and how long did it take you to collect them? I bought the hand dyed fabrics as fat quarter bundles because I thought the colors were amazing. I purchased them all at once without knowing what I would use them for. All the bundles were hand dyed by the same company. I believe it was a husband and wife business and they are no longer in business. It was a couple of years before I made the quilt so I had the border fabric hand dyed for me by Dippy Dyes. I needed three yards for the border and I could no longer get the fabric from the original source. So you can see this is the perfect justification for buying fabric because it's pretty. We eventually get around to using it all!

Can you share 3 of your favorite tips? Press and then press some more.
It is always worth it to use good quality fabrics, so support your local quilt shops.
If you are going to put borders on your quilt find a good resource and review the proper technique.

Thank you Barb,  I wish you lots of success with all of your quilt related endeavors,