Last year I read an article about Lisa Walls Calle.   She had made her first quilt a few months prior to the article being written and had found her passion and turned it into a self supporting hobby.  I love stories like this!  Isn’t that something that we all want?  To be able to do what we love and get paid for it?  She currently sells her creations on Etsy here.

SophiaAster by Lisa Wall Calle

Lisa says, “I love quilting because it allows me to combine so many great fabrics and colors in ways that wouldn’t necessarily work in a garment.  The women in my father’s family were quilters and I like the feeling of carrying on a family tradition. It’s a toss up which part of quilting I love the best – playing with fabric or the moment when I take the finished piece out of the dryer – the fabric becomes deliciously crinkly and that’s when it looks like a real quilt to me. It’s important to me that all of my quilts are washable because I want them to be used so I make everything out of cotton or linen.  I pre-wash everything before I sell it so it’s pre-shrunk and I can tell the customer exactly how to wash it for the best results.”

SophiaAster quilts by Lisa Walls Calle

Lisa’s current fabric obsessions are a couple of my favorites!  Linen and retro-styled Japanese fabric – perfect for Spring!  Her favorite pieces mix traditional techniques with modern fabrics.  She machine sews all of the pieces herself and hand stitches all of the quilt binding.  She has a personal sewing goal to completely hand-quilt one this year.  How amazing!

Lisa thinks the hardest part of quilting is deciding which ones to sell and which ones to keep!  She blogs about her creations here and likes to share her in-progress work with her customers through this medium.  She also has a Facebook page here.

In January Lisa started the Dallas Modern Quilt Guild.  The membership has already grown to 80 members and they are planning a lot of fun events for the year including quilting bees, workshops, weekend sewing events, and fabric swaps.  If you’re interested in joining this group you can find their blog here and Ning network here. The guild is open to quilters of all experience levels, even people who’ve never quilted but want to learn how.

SophiaAster by Lisa Walls Calle

Lisa took many classes at Make when she first moved to Dallas and one of the reasons she started the guild is to recreate the camaraderie of those sewing classes. “It’s so much fun to get together with a group of creative women (and men!) and talk about fabric and all of the wonderful things you can do with it.”

I’m ready to make a quilt!  How ’bout you?

Tags: design, Lisa Walls Calle, quilts

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 at 12:32 am and is filed under art, design, local, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.