The Quilt Fiction Podcast

Tune into the May episode of Quilt Fiction to listen to an interview with one of the queens of quilt fiction, the fabulous Marie Bostwick!Marie Bostwick!If you’ve listened to this month’s episode, you know what an utter delight Marie is! Have you read her two newest novels yet? You’ll love Esme Cahill Fails Spectacularly and The Restoration of Celia FairchildFor more about Marie and her books, visit her website. Check out Marie’s First interview with Quilt Fiction!Interview Spoiler Alert! Spoiler alert: around sixteen minutes into the interview, we’re talking about the way a story you’re working on can surprise you. Something happens that you weren’t expecting at all. Marie talks about a character in A Thread So Thin, one of the Cobbled Street Court series, and she accidentally reveals an important plot point. So, if you haven’t read the book yet and don’t want to know what happens, go ahead and fast forward through that part of the interview!To keep up with Marie’s latest news and sample her delicious recipes, sign up for her newsletters! Our May Sponsor and Giveaway!Big thanks to Maywood Studio for sponsoring the May 2024 episode of the Quilt Fiction podcast. Maywood Studio is a wholesale textile manufacturer and leading fabric supplier for the quilting and craft industry, and these fine folks are providing an amazing treat for one lucky listener this month: a 21-piece fat quarter bundle. Franny’s Flowers is a cheerful fabric collection inspired by vintage printed cotton feed sacks from the 1930s and 40s. Reminiscent of farm life and country living, these designs honor the memory of a long-time employee who was passionate about collecting period fabrics. A percentage of the proceeds from fabric sales are donated to the American Cancer Society. The Franny’s Flowers Quilt is available to view...

Tune into the April episode of the Quilt Fiction podcast for an interview with novelist Jennifer Chiaverini about her new Elm Creek Quilts book!

In this month’s episode, I’m sharing a work-in-progress with you, From the Homefront Diaries of Lorraine Shatterbuck. I seem to be writing a lot in diary form lately–I’m also writing Diary of a Mad Quilter, a contemporary story about an avid quilter. Both of these diaries, by the way, are available to read for free on the Quilt Fiction website. You can listen to the audio version of Diary of a Mad Quilter by joining the Quilt Fiction Story Guild for as low as $6 a month. We’ve got three great sponsors for today’s episode: Suzie Quilts, Fat Quarter Shop and Denyse Schmidt Quilts! Our sponsors have provided some really nice things for this month’s giveaway. We’re doing two giveaway bundles for March–the first one includes three patterns of your choice from the Suzie Quilts pattern shop plus a Hip Hop Hooray Layer Cake from Fat Quarter Shop. The second giveaway bundle is a year-long membership in Denyse Schmidt’s Patchwork Panel Club, and this one is big–we’re talking a $165 value! Among other things, you’ll get four different fabric panels delivered to you throughout 2024. Each panel features nine mix-and-match fabric designs from the DSQ fabric archives printed on luxuriously soft, high-density quilting cotton and is over two yards of fabric.March 2024 Block of the MonthThe March 2024 Block of the Month is the Stars of Stripes block first published in Aunt Martha’s Work Basket and reprinted in newspapers across the country beginning in 1941. Stars of Stripes block March Book of the MonthThe Quilt by Gary Paulsen, which is one in a trilogy of books that are based on Paulsen’s grandmother. The main character in The Quilt is an unnamed six-year-old boy, but this isn’t a sweet and cozy story. Even though the narrator is very young, this is a book for older, more mature readers. I think a thoughtful sixth grader might get a lot from it, and mature 7th and 8th graders even more so. In a way, I think the readers who might get the most from this are adult women. The Quilt takes place during that time Paulsen lived in Northern Minnesota when he was a young boy. In the story, he travels with his grandmother to a remote farm, where a much older cousin of his is close to giving birth. Her husband is fighting in the war, and she’s tending to the farm by herself. Shortly after the boy and his grandmother arrive, the cousin, Kristina, goes into labor. With that,, the women of the community arrive. The labor is long, and while the women wait, they work on a quilt together. It's a quilt made up of scraps, each one telling a story about a family member’s life, and the women tell the boy all the stories that the quilt contains.

A new year of Quilt Fiction fun has begun! We’ve just dropped the February Quilt Fiction Podcast episode, which includes a wonderful interview with novelist Sandra Dallas. While Sandra has never set out to write quilt fiction per se, she’s clearly got a heart for quilts. In novels such as The Persian Pickle Club, Alice’s Tulips and The Diary of Mattie Spenser, quilts and quiltmaking are central to her characters’ lives. In this episode, Sandra talks about her own days as a quilter as well as some of the quilts that she’s collected over the years. We’re doing two giveaways to celebrate this month’s podcast! The first is from February’s Quilt Fiction sponsor, Oliso, home of cutting-edge fabric tools tailored to the needs of quilters and sewists. Oliso has generously provided a TG1600 ProPlus autolift iron, the M2Pro travel iron, and a fabulous ironing board cover for one lucky listener to win. Our second giveaway is a copy of The Persian Pickle Club, which is our February Book of the Month. If you haven’t read The Persian Pickle Club, you’re in for a treat. If you have, you’ll enjoy it just as much the second time around!You have until March 1st, 2024, to enter to win one of these two great prizes!Not only do we have a Book of the Month, we have a Block of the Month! For February, Block of the Month is “Rocky Road to Kansas,” a paper-pieced block you’ll need a pattern for–and we’ve got a free pattern pdf on our website that you can download by clicking here. New to paper-piecing? We have a how-to video up on the Quilt Fiction YouTube channel. (Note: This is my first-ever how-to quilting demo, and it’s a little goofy.)One of our February projects is overhauling the Quilt Fiction website to make it easier for you to navigate. We have SO much content that it’s taken us a while to get it all sorted out. There are free audio stories, and we’ve got the ongoing online World War II Diary, From the Homefront Diaries of Lorraine Shatterbuck. You can listen to the first five chapters of Friendship Album, 1933, for free as well. If you ever have a question about how to find something, please don’t hesitate to email us at [email protected] want to remind you that if you want quilt fiction audio stories in your email box every week, along with access to a huge archive of quilting stories available to members only, you can sign up for my patron supported Story Guild podcast. For only $6 a month, that’s a lot of fiction! If you’re not ready to make a commitment, try our $10 a month membership, which you can cancel at any time.Thanks so much for being a part of the Quilt Fiction community! I hope you enjoy this month’s podcast episode!xoFrancesP.S. Did you get your copy of our free pattern, Eula’s Hen House?