quilting community | Night Quilter

Do you ever meet someone and know immediately that you will be fast friends? Stephanie from Late Night Quilter is one such person; I truly feel like we are sewing soul sisters despite our proximity across the country. She’s the mom of 4 little ones; I’m the mom of 3. We both love quilting and designing and try to juggle our busy lives to find balance with family, other obligations, and of course, creating. We both began blogging mere months apart, and named our blogs essentially the same name! While we’ve only spent time together in person once, we talk daily thanks to the convenience of Facebook messenger and texting. I’m not exaggerating when I say she’s my rock.

night quilter and late night quilter — Me and Stephanie in Austin after QuiltCon, right before parting ways. *tear*

A few months ago, my daily conversation with Stephanie began the way so many do: “Hey! So I have this idea…” Since that paramount conversation, I have been privileged to be part of Stephanie’s sounding board along her path as she researched, designed, redesigned, adjusted, and tweaked a true labor of love, all in the name of helping busy quilters like us find a bit more order, organization, and help in planning a balanced life. Today I’m excited to tell you all about this labor of love, which has now been released into the wild in the hopes that it flies.

The Quilter’s Planner is 8″ x 11″, made in the USA, and includes everything you need to organize your life, plan and track your sewing projects and be inspired to create something beautiful every day! Here are some more peeks at some of what’s included in the planner, but you can see so much more HERE. I also suggest you watch the video Stephanie made about it. (Get your tissues handy–I totally cried!–then again, maybe I’m just sappy)

weekly calendar — Weekly Calendar with larger to-do list areas, and a new block pattern for every week.

Project planner to help keep on top of UFOs.

graph paper — Graph paper for sketching ideas and visualizing quilty math.

MakeRoomArtPiece low res (1) — Inspiring pull out art prints by Kelsey Boes of Lovely and Enough.

Not only is the Quilter’s Planner a labor of love created by Stephanie while supported by her BQF (best quilty friends) and family, but it’s also a melding of the quilting community unlike any other. Stephanie has been working with the quilting community throughout the entire process; everything from asking what features should be included in the planner to actually including 52 original quilt block designs from awesome quilt bloggers AND 8 full quilt patterns from amazing designers (Cheryl Brickey (Meadowmist Designs), Yvonne Fuchs (Quilting Jetgirl), Amy Garro (13 Spools), Lee Heinrich (Freshly Pieced), Mandy Leins (Mandalei Quilts), Pat Sloan (Pat Sloan), me! (Night Quilter) and Stephanie herself (Late Night Quilter). She also worked with another quilt blogger friend, talented artist and designer Kelsey Boes from Lovely and Enough, to include gorgeous and inspiring artwork pullouts. Yes, you read that correctly–the planner also includes a whole bunch of patterns to help inspire you to create something beautiful every. single. day. It is a real passion project of Stephanie’s and she feels strongly about making it a community-based project including lots of people’s work who want to share their creativity with others. What’s not to love?

I invite you to visit the Indigogo Campaign to read more about this planner and all it has to offer. If you’re like me and can’t wait to have a one-stop-spot for all of your day to day appointments, obligations, AND quilty project goals and to-do lists (not to mention ample space to sketch new ideas and record inspiration), you can preorder yours now, too. There’s even a 95% guarantee that you’ll get it before Christmas. (hello, Santa!)

I do want to note that this post is purely my desire to share a heart-filled, community-based project that I’ve been honored enough to see grow from infancy into near-adulthood. I have already ordered my own planner and would not let Stephanie gift one to me. I share this project because I believe in it, and I honestly think that many of you probably will love it, too! I am very much looking forward to getting organized in 2016! So much love for Stephanie and all of her hard work that has gone into making this planner a reality, all for the sake of helping her fellow busy quilters find a bit more balance and organization in life.

I’ve written many times about the amazing online community of quilters and the powerful connections made across the world in this quilting blogosphere. While many times, this community helps us share inspiration and joy, sometimes that close-knit community must play another role: sharing sorrow and hope. Recently, Rachel from Stitched in Color, a fellow quilty blogger, had a much-anticipated baby. While typically the birth of a baby ignites much shared joy, this birth did not go well. I frequent Rachel’s blog, but actually found out about the unexpected complications through Instagram before reading about it on her blog. Jodi from Tales of Cloth has organized a world-wide support for Rachel and her family, in the form of English Paper Pieced hexi flowers. You can read about her plan HERE, where she shares a tutorial on how to make an EPP hexi flower, and explains her plan of expressing all of our support and love. Needless to say, I dropped my to-do list, hugged my kids, and got started on a couple of flowers.

My plan is to make as many of these as I can by the end of the week (I’m aiming for 2-4) and mail them to Jodi in Australia on Saturday.

I am so grateful to Jodi for organizing this effort, since with such a devastating event, one can feel so hopeless. Yet, I fully believe in the power of prayer and positive intention. Call it what you will, but think about this: hundreds of people stitching hexi flowers with Eleni, Rachel, and the rest of their family in mind. Maybe praying, maybe crying, maybe just thinking the most positive, healing, hopeful thoughts they can muster. Each person putting his or her love, hope, prayer, and positive healing intention into every. single. stitch. THAT is powerful.

I’m stitching, praying, sending healing thoughts and energy, and hoping for a miracle. Miracles happen. Sometimes, they appear in very unexpected situations, and sometimes they may not seem like a miracle at first, but miracles happen. If nothing more, we can wrap Rachel and her family in a literal blanket of love with this quilt.

If you would like to join this effort of support, send Jodi a message to find out more information on where to send your flowers. There’s also an Auction for Eleni to raise money to help support the family. Or, you could just pray or send your healing and hopeful energy & intentions their way. Check out the hashtag #flowersforeleni on Instagram to see the flowers in progress so far. For me, I am taking moments throughout the day to pause, pray, and stitch, grateful for the opportunity to show my love, and always, always hoping for a miracle and peace for the family.

Read an update on Eleni here.

I’m linking up with Monday Makers, Design Wall, and Making Monday, since spreading the word never hurts!