You are in for a ride!
Or maybe I am… anyway, it is going to be fun.
I belong to the DC chapter of the Modern Quilt Guild. Every year they ask the chapters that want to work on a quilt based on a color palette and theme. Then those quilts are exhibited at QuiltCon. Last year I designed our quilt. The theme was medallion quilts. A medallion quilt is a quilt that has a central focus and then usually several borders that span out from the center. A lot of the time that center is in the shape of a square on point (rotated 45 degrees). I thought that the shape of DC was perfect for a medallion quilt. Our chapter is made up of people from DC, Maryland, and Virginia (DMV). It’s all one big place, so I decided that DC couldn’t have all the fun, and I had to include Maryland and Virginia. I designed a quilt that represents all three states with their prominent landmarks and symbols, and that is how “DMV Stitched in Blue” was born.
It was a lot of fun to design it and even more fun to work with the quilters in the guild to build it. I didn't make things easy on myself when I decided to design this quilt. Every block had to be drafted, and it had to be done carefully so that someone else could make it. When I do patterns for my own quilts, I skip a lot of steps, and there is a lot of "Oh, I’ll figure it out as I’m building it." The DCMQG quilters always amaze me with how good they are and got it done beautifully, and the quilt was not only shown in QuiltCon but also is going to be shown in the International Quilt Festival in the Stitched States: 250 Years - A Quilted Map of Our Nation.
I enjoyed making this quilt so much, and people liked making the quilt, so why not make quilts about other places and invite other quilters to make it with me? And that is how I thought of the Quilt Mystery Tour!
In the quilt world there is a type of pattern called mystery quilts. Every month quilters get a new instruction to sew a component of a quilt, and they don’t know what it will look like at the end. The Quilt Mystery Tour is going to be like that, but it is going to be a surprise even for me. I’m going to pick a place, and the quilt will be all landmarks and special things about that place. I’m going to design it as we go along with suggestions from the quilters and maybe learn something about each suggestion. There will be monthly virtual (maybe in-person) meetings where we can show our work, ask questions, or just hang out. At the end of a year, we will have a finished quilt top about that location and know so much more about the place and each other.
The place I picked for this trip is going to be… BALTIMORE! I picked Baltimore because I live nearby and I can go and get photos and inspiration if I need to. Also I know people there, and I have had some amazing quilt experiences in Baltimore this past year. I exhibited and won an award at The Peale Museum, I had my quilts on a huge billboard, and I contributed to a group quilt with the Baltimore Heritage Museum for the Homage to Quilt Exhibition.
There is a long quilting tradition in Baltimore (have you heard of Baltimore Album quilts?), and I am surprised at the interest in quilting that I have recently discovered in the city, so here we go!
If you are a quilter and interested in joining, go to the Quilt Mystery Tour page and sign up. We start in October 2026, but you can catch the train at a later station if you miss it.
