Episode 03: No Hoop, No Frame, No Limits

Mar 24

Hello and welcome to the Hand Quilted Podcast. I’m Taniya Barrows, a hand quilter attempting to stitch my own path through a machine quilted world. I’m also a creative writer who loves to tell stories. With this podcast I am piecing together these two passions of mine to share my hand quilting projects, misadventures, and life lessons learned one stitch at a time. I invite you to grab your needle, thread, and thimble, and join me on my hand quilting journey.

Episode 3: No Hoop, No Frame, No Limits

One of my earliest introductions to hand quilting came somewhere around the end of high school. One day I was at a friend’s house and I spotted what looked like a blanket wound up within this wooden contraption, but also kind of threaded through it in a manner that reminded me of a conveyor belt, that is if the conveyor belt was a few feet wide by about 18 inches deep, and stood 3 or 4 feet tall. When I asked my friend what this thing was, she said it was the quilt her mom was hand quilting. I had never known her mom to be a quilter, but I did know her to be fairly crafty, in all the good sort of ways, so I just accepted it and moved on.

A year or so after my friend and I graduated from high school, I found myself staying with her family for a short time, which allowed me the daily gift of walking by what I now know was a basted quilt secured on a quilting frame. I even have a hazy memory or two (it has been a couple of decades) of my friend’s mom sitting at her quilt hand stitching away. With what I had swirling around in my own personal life at that time, I did not have the capacity to inquire further about her quilt, her quilting experience, or that frame, but I think that was where my curiosity about quilting was first planted as a seed in the back corners of my heart.

When I think back on that time in my life, I can’t help but wonder if my quilting life would have changed at all had I asked my friend’s mom more questions about her quilt and her experiences with hand quilting. And what if I had learned more about that quilting frame and how to properly use it back then? Would that have made a difference and changed my relationship to hand quilting, or was I always destined to be so very different? Because, when I was finally able to tend to that seed of curiosity, and turned to quilting as the means to mend my broken heart, I very quickly discovered that for me any sort of quilting frame would be such a barrier!

Now granted, there are many different styles and sizes of quilting frames. As my friend’s mom’s frame illustrated, there is some degree of portability that can allow some frames to be stored and moved around with some degree of ease, but just about every frame I know of, including my friend’s mom’s, requires this concept of being fixed to quilting in one place, one room even. I’ve never had the room in my home for a quilting frame, nor have I had the desire to only quilt in one fixed space. The more I learned how to make those quilting stitches, the more I wanted to make them while out roaming the world.

Thankfully, for my fellow wandering quilters, there is another option: the quilting hoop. This dual ringed contraption can be used in place of a frame and allows for more quilting mobility, and it takes up much less space too. But despite what all of those YouTube videos say, it’s not that easy to learn how to use. At least it wasn’t for me. I figured out all the other things those videos told me I needed know in order to be a hand quilter: I could make a quilter’s knot in my thread, I could bury my knot between the layers of fabric, I could even load my quilt into my hoop leaving it taunt, yet “loose enough it looked as if a cat just slept in it.” But no matter how hard I tried, or how long I practiced, I simply could not master the art of rocking my needle up and down through the portion of my quilt secured inside that hoop, which is the motion needed to make any kind of quilting stitch.

I remember getting so frustrated and discouraged that I didn’t know what to do. This quilting thing wasn’t going as I had hoped. At least it wasn’t until that one day I needed something and went to my local quilt shop to get it.

I don’t remember what it was I needed, but as Martha, the owner of the shop, was ringing me up at the register that day, I happened to mention my frustrations with trying to hand quilt with a hoop. Martha then gave me the biggest quilting gift that anyone could have given me. It was so big and important that it would end up saving my quilting endeavors completely. She simply said to me, “then just don’t use a hoop!”

My goodness, talk about a solution that was so simple and so obvious! I can’t believe I didn’t think of it myself, and I especially don’t know why I needed Martha’s permission to abandon my efforts of trying to do something that wasn’t working, and instead to follow my own instincts and work in a manner my body found comfortable. Whatever those reasons were, I’m grateful she gave me such a simple and kind gift, and I’m ever so glad I listened to her!

After talking to Martha, I ditched the hoop, I never tried the quilting frame, and with one miserable exception mandated by absolute necessity, I’ve never looked back! I now just pile my quilt in my lap, and I use both of my hands to grasp the section of quilt I am quilting, to smooth and steady my fabrics as I go, and to guide my needle as I make all of my beautiful and imperfect quilting stitches.

As a result, I love how free and portable my life as a quilter has become. In a world consumed with ever advancing technologies, and a growing list of gadgets and gizmos we’re told we have to have, I quilt with the simplest and most basic of tools: a needle, some thread, a thimble, a pair of scissors, and a bit of beeswax to condition my thread. That’s it! I have a small pouch to keep it all in that permanently sits on the end table beside my favorite quilting chair in our living room. When it’s time to go out and quilt in the world, all I need to do is grab my current quilt-in-progress and my tool pouch, and then go! And let me tell ya, out into the world I have gone!

I have worked on my quilting in my neighborhood park while taking a much needed break from mommy-hood, and at the beach as my son had a special practice with his high school cross country team. I’ve taken my quilting to work on at many of my friends’ homes, during family gatherings, and while waiting for scout meetings to end. Some of my favorite quilting destinations have been our camping trips and adventures to Kings Canyon, Zion, and Yosemite National Parks, as well as that pandemic year we camped in Sequoia National Forest. I have sat on my back porch and quilted in the morning with my coffee at hand, and in the evening with my family gathered around our little fire pit enjoying the sunset. I have ventured with my quilting down by our pool to enjoy our garden view and watch our kids and dogs play. I have quilted in hotel rooms during numerous trips, in a train station waiting for my mom to arrive, and then on a train when it was my turn to go visit her. I have slipped away from the non-stop pace of a family Disneyland trip to savor a moment of quiet and beauty, and quilted in the lobby of Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel. I have taken up a couple of English paper piecing projects (commonly referred to as EPP) to work on during long car trips, and even on the plane last year when my husband made my life long wish to visit Paris come true.

And yet, my most common quilting destinations have involved my kids and their chosen activities. One of the things you’re not told about before becoming a parent is just how much time you will find yourself sitting around and waiting for your kid to finish living their best life. It’s handy to have something to do while you wait, and when that thing you have to do is hand quilting you get the added bonus of staying warm when it’s chilly outside. I learned this lesson thanks to my oldest son’s swim meets.

Let me tell ya, swim meets start early, last all weekend, and happen all year round! We may live in San Diego County, but February mornings are still really cold when you’re sitting outside by a pool on a Saturday watching the sun come up as your kid, his team mates, and all the other swimmers competing in the meet that day, begin swimming their pre-race warm ups. My hands may have been a bit cold, but I was always cozy and warm snuggled in my camping chair beneath whichever quilt I was working on that day while chatting with the other swim parents.

My husband and I are blessed with three boys who are three very different individuals following three very different paths through life. We are happy that we can support each of them in finding the activities they are interested in as they discover their individual passions in this world. Sure, logistically speaking, it would have been really nice if they could have chosen the same activities, or even slightly related activities that had practices and meetings next to each other and maybe even at the same time, but then if I was only ever sitting by the pool I wouldn’t have found myself chatting with so many lovely dance moms through the years, and watched as their dancers have grown beside mine.

My middle son has been a performer his whole life in one way or another. We first brought him to the dance studio when he was about 5 years old. I then sat back and watched in awe as he tried numerous dance styles before finding his passion for tap. It’s been 9 years since he first walked through the doors of a dance studio, and his love for tap has only grown. Through it all, I have passed many a hour sitting in a dance studio’s waiting areas just waiting for class to end. While my son and his fellow dancers spend that time repeatedly and diligently practicing one dance step or technique after another, I pass the time stitching away on my latest quilting project while marveling at how true to himself my kid is brave enough to be, especially as he has been navigating middle school these last couple of years in a town that primarily funnels its boys into sports and its girls into dance. Seriously, I want to be like him when I grow up!

And then we’ve got our youngest son. When faced with the options of either following his oldest brother into the pool, or his other older brother into the dance studio or onto the stage, our youngest son opted for the soccer field instead! Like I said, three very different individuals following three very different paths, but we love it! Our youngest son is only 9 years old as I write and record this part of our story, so he has a long way to go before fully committing himself to chasing that soccer ball around, but for however long he has us out along the sidelines of that soccer field, I’m going to cheer as loud as I can, and be ever so grateful I have a warm quilt to wrap up in during those cold nights at practice, and the lightweight EPP projects when the heat of our summer and fall temperatures bake our fields, which can even happen during our evening practice times in that part of the year.

Bringing my hand quilting out into the world is more than just staying warm and making progress on my stitching. I’m not just occupying my time; I’m also adding to the story and the life of that quilt. Max’s Monkey quilt was there with me at the pool in Fallbrook as his older brother got new best times in his swim meet and grew as a competitive swimmer. My cousin’s wedding quilt was there with me as I sat in the dance studio’s hallways, just outside of the classroom where my middle son fell in love with the art of tap dancing. My husband’s quilt has kept me warm, and helps keep the mosquitos off my legs, while I sit out in the elements watching our youngest son ignite his passion for soccer. And of course, there’s my Mystery Quilt that helped me survive our time in the NICU.

As I sit in so many different places and run my needle and thread through the layers of my quilts while adventuring out into the world, waiting for my kids as they discover their passions in life, or simply enjoying our little corner of the world in our own back yard, I am doing more than just making a blanket. I am stitching bits of these moments, places, and activities of our lives into these quilts that are intended to bring us warmth and comfort in the years ahead. I could never do that if I was chained to a machine or bound to a frame.

Thank you for joining me and sharing my hand quilting journey. The Hand Quilted Podcast is a Dragonfly & Poppy Production, which means it is written, recorded, and produced by me, Taniya Barrows, with music by Craig Riley, and logo design by Shelly Mullin. If you would like to see pictures of some of my favorite quilting destinations, you can find them on my website at www.handquiltedpodcast.com. While there, you can also find a transcript of today’s show.

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