Penny Halgren asked:


e a quilter and have not yet tried your hand at Leisure Arts quilt patterns, stop by your local library or bookstore to see what you have been missing!

Leisure Arts is one of the world’s largest publishers of craft instructional guides. Located in Little Rock, Arkansas, Leisure Arts publishes instructional DVDs, books, leaflets, and newsletters in addition to its website, www.leisurearts.com.

The company has many focuses from cross stitch to knitting, to Christmas entertaining. Leisure Arts’quilting patterns are some you will not want to miss.

Mary Engelbreit fans will love the Leisure Arts quilt patterns book called “Breit Quilts to Applique.”

“A Banquet of Quilts” is another Leisure Arts quilt patterns book. The designs are for quilted placemats and table runners. The quilt patterns will give you beautiful finished products to dress up any table and delight guest for many years.

12 Leisure Arts quilt patterns are featured in “A Year of Rag Quilts.” The blocks created will make great wall hangings and pillows. Combine them to make a full quilt!

“Seven Day Quilts” promises to teach techniques that will get you a completely finished quilt within a week! The Leisure Arts quilt patterns in this book are for very colorful quilts.

If you are looking for quilt patterns that are more traditional, Leisure Arts offers those, too. Leisure Arts quilt patterns of long ago are brought back to life in “Antqieu Quilts Recreated”. The book also demonstrates how to use reproduction fabrics in your quilting so your new quilt will look almost identical to the old ones!

Leisure Arts also offers some free patterns. To enjoy some free Leisure Arts quilt patterns, visit the website and click on the “Free Downloads” tab. You will need to enter your name and email address to register, but the downloads that follow are free.

There are quilting and other craft projects availalbe to download. From the craft downloads, you will find fun creations like a child’s rose petal t-shirt, a holiday card holder, and necklaces.

You will also find downloads for crochet and knitting, cross stitch, recipes, and paper crafts, too.

Leisure Arts quilt patterns and other Leisure Arts projects may be the topics of podcasts or webcasts. If you are interested in downloading those, select the “Webcast” tab and follow the directions. You will be able to select your focus, either quilting, crafts, cross stitch, etc., from a drop down menu. Once you download your audio or video, you can watch or listen to the instructions at your convenience.

After looking at the Leisure Arts quilt patterns and other projects, you may decide you are ready to buy one of the company’s books. The company offers its instructional books for sale online but they are also available in traditional bookstores. There is a “Store Locator” tab that will help you find your nearest dealer. Also, do not forget to check your local library. You may luck out and find that your library has nearly an entire collection!

Leisure Arts’ designs come primarily from freelance designers. This means that if you have a special pattern you have created, you have the opportunity to get it included in an upcoming Leisure Arts quilt patterns book! To learn more information about how to get your own projects considered for publication, check out the company’s website. Click on “About Us” then look down to see the “How We Get Our Designs” heading. You will find all the information you need there!



Bradley

thai asked:


My grandma is on the phone and keeps asking me to look these things up for her. I don’t know a lot about quilting patterns or sewing, in general. If you can help, please do. Thank you.

Nicholas

Jan Myers asked:


The Great Depression was an era that created quite a challenge for women who desired to quilt. Not only was money very tight in households, but there were limited supplies nationwide. Women had to turn to creativity and resourcefulness in order to create beautiful quilts. Some popular quilts of today were actually born from The Great Depression.

The Great Depression, for those of us who weren’t around at the time, was an economic slump in North America, Europe, and other industrialized areas of the world that began in 1929 and lasted until about 1939. Begun with the collapse of agricultural prices in the 1920’s, it’s most well-known for the 1929 collapse of Wall Street. It was the longest and most severe depression ever experienced by the industrialized Western world.

Bankers and other previously weather individuals who lost everything jumped to their deaths from buildings. Workers who could find jobs still struggled to be able to feed their families. With the total collapse of the economy, people found creative ways to brings in small amounts of cash while businesses had to become creative to survive by vying for a portion of that hard-earned money from their customers.

So it’s easy to see why companies selling quilt fabrics, threads and tools had to find a way to create value in their products and encourage quilters to continue to spend such hard-earned cash. Luckily for them, quilts were a necessity that had to be created by hand because the severe economic times limited the ability to purchase them.

Women magazines began offering similar quilting patterns for free with each issue to increase their readership. After all, most household budgets could not afford to purchase a magazine, yet alone several quilting patterns.

So to continue selling magazines and to promote the purchase of fabrics, many vendors chose to offer free patterns that would encourage the purchases. Patterns such as the Star of Bethlehem, Wedding Ring, Grandmother’s Flower Garden and even Dresden Plate are just some of the patterns we still use today that were actually the result of The Great Depression.

Often women would share one magazine. They would trace the quilting patterns or even a picture from a quilt photographed for the magazine to make their own patterns at home. The most popular magazines would occasionally offer iron-on quilt patterns. These were extremely well received since several women could share not only the cost of the magazine but could share the iron-on patterns for their quilting.

Thus, offering free quilting patterns actually became a common marketing tradition that is still used today.

I found it particularly interesting that what was used to market to women and sell women’s magazines in The Great Depression is still used today. Many companies even offer free patterns in their magazines for quilting and other crafts.

We offer the same service at www.QuiltingResourceCenter to people who sign up for the patterns, even if they don’t belong to the members-only section of the website. Of course, those who do join the members-only site regularly receive original patterns created just for our members.

But caveat emptor

Jackie