Loose Threads: Stories to Keep Quilters in Stitches - Hardcover

“I remember the incident very clearly. I was hunched over the copy machine in the office supplies store, concentrating, playing with designs for a twelve-inch friendship quilt block. I enlarged shapes, cut them out, and rearranged them. Suddenly, I was aware of a hand moving softly across my back. The hand wandered. It stroked; it plucked. I spun around to face the woman standing behind me.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked, bewildered.

She was embarrassed.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I was just picking the loose threads off of the back of your shirt.’

Later, thinking about those loose threads, I realized how much a part of me they are. . . . I am a hand-quilter and in the hours I spend at my quilt frame, I work quietly, stitching inch by inch. While I am stitching, my mind looks back over the moments of each day, wandering and wondering. These mental meanderings are my loose threads. . . . Because I am lucky enough to love this quilting that I do, these loose threads fill my thoughts with joy and curiosity and laughter. . . .”

Helen Kelley’s “Loose Threads” column has been a favorite of readers of Quilters Newsletter for twenty-five years. She is the author of Every Quilt Tells a Story and Helen Kelley’s Joy of Quilting. Helen’s “Renaissance Quilt” was chosen as one of the 100 Best Quilts of the Twentieth Century, and she is the 2008 inductee into the prestigious Quilters Hall of Fame.

“Reading Helen Kelley is like having coffee with a good friend. In sharing details from her quilting life, she touches us with insights that are both personal and universal, simple and monumental.”

—Jean Ray Laury, internationally known quiltmaker, instructor, and author

Blurb from Lisa Iverson to come this week

—Lisa Iverson, Executive Director, Quilters Hall of Fame

Blurb from Jan Magee to come this week

—Jan Magee, Executive Editor, Quilters Newsletter

With signature wit and wisdom, Helen Kelley weaves the “loose threads” of life into charming stories that every quilter can appreciate. Her warm humor and poignant insights about the quilting life are sure to make you laugh, as you recognize yourself in tales of family, friendship, and a passion for quilts.

Helen Kelley is a celebrated quiltmaker, instructor, lecturer, and author. For twenty-five years, this Erma Bombeck of the quilting world has parlayed her passion for all things quilt into her enormously popular “Loose Threads” column in Quilters Newsletter. A master quilter, Helen’s “Renaissance Quilt” was chosen as one of the 100 Best Quilts of the Twentieth Century, and she is the 2008 inductee into the prestigious Quilters Hall of Fame.