Jan T patchwork author

Showcasing the books, articles and websites of renowned quilting writer, Jan T Urquhart Baillie, on the subject of patchwork and quilting.

Jan T also writes extensively about computer quilt design software for Australia's first patchwork and quilting magazine, Down Under Quilts.

That's a much younger me (I was 50 then)!

for Down Under Quilts magazine

Australia's first patchwork and quilting magazine was begun in 1988.

In 1990, I began writing a column, Join Jan, about design and patchwork quilts.

Soon after I was asked to review a couple of quilt design programmes for DUQ (its nickname) so I bought my first computer. Knew nothing at all about them, but learned really fast to love my own. It's actually love/hate!

Before long I was wrting about Electric Quilt (EQ) so much that the column became Computer Quilts.

I bought DUQ in 1995, became a computer whizz really fast, but sold it when my husband was killed in 1999.

After a few isses without the column, I was asked to start writing again, so I am currently writing the column each month.

Excerpt from Down Under Quilts magazine 'Patches' column

Definitive Book for Beginning Quilters

Jan T Urquhart and Angela M Clark have written the definitive book for beginning quilters - easy to understand with techniques shown in step-by-step colour photographs. Using two simple shapes, instructions for 16 different quilts from three simple patterns are provided.

Many people are taught to make a sampler quilt for their first quilt. These quilts can be composed of up to 25 different blocks, all with several techniques, and are usually very lengthy projects. Often they become a chore to complete, and end up in the back of the cupboard in the UFO pile many years later.

Jan T and Angela have taken a much simpler approach, by guiding beginners through the basic principles of machine quilt making in a series of easy steps - starting with choosing fabrics and colours and going right through to the finishing touches.

They decided to use two simple shapes - a square and a rectangle - and because it is possible to make so many different blocks with these two shapes, they chose Four Patch and Puss in the Corner. By changing the arrangements of the blocks, you can make several quilt designs, and by changing the colours, you can make quilts with identical designs look totally different!

Creative Living Media is thrilled to announce that this is one book all beginning quilters and all teachers of beginners will want.

Purple medallion quilt from the book

• Patchwork Quilt Tsushin: a series of six articles on Computers and Quilters in Australia
• Patches Magazine: South Australian Quilters Guild Newsletter
• The Template: Newsletter for The Quilters Guild of NSW
• Down Under Quilts: several features about my quilts, and inclusion in themed articles, eg Fan Quilts
• Associated Content: articles abut machine quilting, creativity,quilts
• Celebrating the Traditions: by Karen Fail, a chapter about my scrap quilts
• Material Facts: journal of Queensland Quilters
• Several outback Queensland newspapers during 1992
• Several Victorian goldfields newspapers during a speaking tour in 1994

Quilts 2000: Australia Celebrates, a coffee table book, not only features two of my quilts, but also has pictures of me at functions for the project.

I designed and laid out the entire book, including deep etching more than 800 quilt photos. A mammoth, but satisfying project.

A Moment in Time

Next came A Moment in Time.

I wrote this one in two weeks! Angela helped and my good friend Annie took many of the photographs.

In this book, published by Pride Publishing in 2003, my daughter and I combined scrapbooking and quilting in little quilts. Capturing a moment in time, the quits tell the story of the pictures, using text and embellishments, just as in scrapbooking.

This is one of the little quilts inside: Big, big, big, big bear.

Listen With Your Eyes

My second book, Listen With Your Eyes, published by J B Fairfax Press, is about colour and value, about using all sorts of fabrics in the same quilt, about my fast piecing methods developed between 1990 and 1992 while teaching what was, at the time, a revolutionary technique.

While it is out of print, you can still get this book if you search for it. There are a few around.

The quilt is called Listen With Your Eyes - the quilt that started it all!

Every time I think there couldn't be any more ideas to use with the technique, I realise that I've 'invented' another way to do something!

So, I'm currently writing version 2 as an eBook.

More on that later.

Designing Quilts is Fun - Sets and Borders

In print!

In 1990, I self-published Designing Quilts Is Fun - Sets and Borders, which was a great success.

Designing Quilts is Fun was self published at a time when Australian authors were not recognised as quilting experts, and the topic was not covered in any specific book at that time.

There were three books on this much needed topic withing a few months of this being published!

Ideas are floating out in the continuum.
Just reach up and you'll catch one.