Piecing Miss Rosie's Quilts; Sweet Emma Rose

Carrie Nelson is the creative center of Miss Rosie’s Quilt Company, a quilt pattern design business. Miss Rosie, Carrie’s golden retriever, is the company namesake. After Carrie creates a new quilt pattern, a sample quilt is created to test the pattern design and instructions. The sample quilt is then photographed for marketing purposes. Often the sample quilt goes on the road to quilt shows and quilt shops. Sometimes Carrie calls on her friends to create these beautiful sample quilts.

Judy has enjoyed making quilt samples for Carrie for several years. Piecing is the process of cutting and sewing the blocks and other components of the quilt top. The process begins with Carrie’s pattern design, and a selection of quilt fabrics chosen to show off the pattern and possibly feature a new line of fabrics. Carrie and Judy discuss the project and the piecing process begins. Judy plays with the selected fabrics and decides on the choices for block construction. Then the pieces are cut for a sample block. The sample block is cut and sewn together to confirm the pattern instructions. There is occasional consultation with Carrie to go over piece sizes, assembly strategies, etc.

The blocks are made, and then assembled into a quilt top, borders are added and the backing piece is prepared. The pieced quilt goes back to Carrie, who takes it to one of the long arm quilters who adds the quilting stitches that tie together the quilt top, quilt backing, and the batting in the middle. Then a finishing binding is added. Now the quilt is ready for the photo shoot. Photos are used for the quilt pattern covers, magazine articles, and quilt books. Many of the quilts then begin a tour around the country to be displayed at quilt shows, quilt classes and Quilt Market, the industries major trade show.

You can learn more about Miss Rosie's Quilt Company from Carrie's web site. Carrie's quilt patterns are sold in quilt shops around the country. Carrie's quilting books are available at Amazon.

Carrie is a terrific quilt designer, but she also has an engaging personality that shines through in her blog, La Vie en Rosie, where she talks about her quilting life and her quilting travels.

This book features 12 relatively simple lap-sized quilts made from layer cakes (10" squares) and the original "Schnibbles" version made from charm packs (5" squares). A schnibble is a small bite or a nibble or a small bit of cloth. So, Carrie applied the word to her design collection of Schnibbles and the "Schnibbles Times Two" are her lap-sized quilts made from "bigger" bits,

Judy made three sample quilts for the collection. "Open Season" is a design mix of Flying Geese and sashing. In "Plan C", a field of stars are formed by flying-geese units. The block design in "Little Red" came from a full sized quilt design that Carrie named "Radio Flyer". Fast forward a couple of years, and Carrie christened her schnibble sized version as "Little Red", but don't worry too much about the red!

"Whirligig" is one of our favorite quilts. The sample that Judy made has just come back from a tour and again hangs over a couch in our family room. Carrie is notorious for her clever quilt design names. Occasionally she brainstorms with friends for names for her designs. The pinwheels made me think of whirligig, and earned me a small mention in her book.

The book is titled "It's A Dog's Life". Carrie gives her business namesake, Rosie, full credit for "proofing" her quilts.

"Gone to Seed" was inspired by the fabric collection, Seeds of Time. She felt that the name worked well with the "scrappiness" of the quilt design. Carrie is not above crafting words when necessary to describe her creations and creative process.

She named one of the quilt designs in the same book "Spencer". She listened to a Katherine Hepburn biography as she was finishing the quilt.

Thinking of Hepburn led to thinking of Spencer Tracy. The bow-ties in the quilt design made her think of the bow ties Tracy's wore in "Inherit the Wind"... all very Carrie...

"Sweet Emma Rose", was inspired by an antique quilt that Carrie saw many years ago. The horizontal chevrons stuck in her mind and led to this softer design.

For "Wild Irish Rose", Carrie created a very scrappy version of the traditional Irish Chain quilt.

"Jelly Bellies", is a simple Snowball Block design. The name was a challenge until Carrie decided that the finished quilt looked like a jar of jelly beans!

Carrie Nelson designed a large quilt pattern she named "Elizabeth". Judy loved the quilt design and decided to make a smaller version. Using Carrie's pattern, she scaled it to half the size and shortened the name to "Beth".

This quilt was featured in Quiltmaker's Small Quilts magazine and in the blog, Quilty Pleasures.

As Carrie says, "traditional blocks never go out of style." She used Delectable Mountain Blocks, circled by Sawtooth Stars and Four Patches. An illusion of a border is created at the quilt's edges.

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