Joanne Kerton
Make it your own
20 November 2024
How do you take a pattern and create a quilt that is uniquely yours? Using my own quilt designs, we will explore how different choices alter the look and feel of a quilt. Backgrounds, borders, bindings and backs are often considered secondary to the block designs, but they have a significant impact on the finished quilt. I’ll share tips on fabric selection as well as ways to tweak a pattern and even mix and match elements from different patterns. Let’s learn to look at those patterns with new eyes!
Joanne Kerton was bitten by the quilting bug over 20 years ago, paper piecing and hand quilting her first quilt over the course of a year and a half. Her speed has improved since then, though enjoying the process ranks higher than speed in her book!
She enjoys playing with shapes, colours and layouts, and figuring out the math that goes with them. She started sharing her quit designs as patterns in 2013 and has published almost 70 stand-alone patterns. She has had designs published in American Patchwork and Quilting magazine, has patterns in quilting catalogs, collaborates with various fabric companies and enjoys speaking and teaching about quilting.
Having studied Physics and worked in museum education programming, she thinks she has finally figured out what she wants to be when she grows up: a quilter! A proud Canadian, she currently resides in Iowa, following her astronomer husband’s job there. Happily, quilting is portable so she can follow her dreams while he explores the stars.
