- What is a quiltist?
Noun
1: a person who performs certain actions concerning quilts and quilting: designing, piecing, appliquéing, fabric shopping, sew-a-longs, etc
2: a person who practices the art of quilting
Greetings and welcome!
My name is Dave Daniels, and I’m the host here at the QUILT.ist website. I’ve been sewing since I was around eight years old. My paternal grandparents owned their own upholstery business, so that was an early influence. My mom also was an avid home sewer, making things for around the home and for her own wardrobe. Needless to say, we spent a lot of time in fabric stores growing up. And, for many years, I worked in some of the best fabric stores such as The Fabric Place, Brighton Upholstery, and North End Fabrics. I was so much fun working with folks, helping them make fabric selections, and seeing them return to the store to share the results of their projects.
My early career was in home decorating and learned so much from their store’s in-house home decorating services. We were trained in the actual manufacturing of things such as window treatments, upholstery, and slipcovers. We were taught the properties of fiber content in relation to how it would perform in the final product. WE would have our own competitions to design and make new items, decorative toss pillows were my favorite.
It was in that shop in the late 1970’s, and a decorating client came in and wanted some help choosing fabric for curtains in a guest room. What she brought blew us all away: a fabulous handmade quilt from her grandma. It was outstanding! It was an appliqued flower garden with leaves and flowers and bees and COLOR! That was it for me, the first moment when I knew I had to learn about this quilting thing.
From there, I got a job in Boston at the old Design Center on Boylston Street for Schumacher Fabrics. I finally got to work directly with the real designers and decorators. My years of experience paid off and I got transferred to their New York showroom where I worked for a short time. I didn’t enjoy it, though. The job really challenged my knowledge and learned a lot. But, I really missed my local clients and hobbyists and returned to Boston.
For a few years I bounced around and finally landed at North End Fabrics in Boston’s Chinatown. It was my favorite store in Boston and knew pretty much everyone working there.
In August, 1999, I had the extreme please to have my quilt, The Gate, featured in the Quilter’s Newsletter Magazine, Issue 314! The owner of North End Fabrics, Ellen, had the page from the magazine blown up and hung it in the store when I got back from vacation. It was an amazing time. Also, Ellen let me hang so many of my quilts in the store because they were all made with fabric from the store.
The Gate, below, was the first thing I ever designed on a computer. The original design was done with colored pencils on graph paper. Then, scanned into the HUGE cow-patterned computer. I used the photo program to distort the design. Then, printed it all out as a huge, tiled pattern. Each piece was cut out, then glued to paper to add seam allowances. Then, cut the new pattern pieces out. My gosh, the amount of labor just to get the pattern ready for the fabric. No two pieces were the same and it was all about the precision sewing. New photos coming soon.
(STILL WORKING ON THIS PART. LOOKING FOR SOME OLD PHOTOS.)
Bryan, my fiancé, and I moved to Northampton, Massachusetts in the autumn of 2019. Northampton is a great place to live because of all the natural and scenic beauty, as well as a deep respect for handcrafting, the arts, farmer’s markets and more. Northampton, in particular, is a very gay-friendly town, with Smith College just a few blocks from our apartment.
We spend a lot of our time together working on our crafts, cooking together, hiking and exploring, and working on our garden.
