Hi, I’m Charlie. I’m a Kansas City quilter with 30+ years of quilting tenure, one very outspoken quilt studio, and a blog that refuses to be beige.
Quilting has always been my family. My grandmother and my aunt Marge were both quilters. Aunt Marge ran a long-arm business out of her basement on a Swingline Quilting Frame — the opposite of a long-arm machine today. With hers, the machine stays still and the quilt frame, suspended from a track on the ceiling, moves.
Worker in Factory using swing line frame set up
I was self-taught. My ex-mother-in-law was big into quilting, and I would be in her studio watching her work. One day I asked her if she would mind teaching me to quilt. She suggested I look through her many, many quilt books, find a pattern I liked, and she’d help me along the way. That kept me busy and out of her hair for a few hours. She gave me one piece of advice: choose a smaller-sized quilt.
I searched through those books until I found a pattern I liked, and she let me take the book home and read it over. I was so excited I could have wet myself. The very next day I went out and bought a new sewing machine from Wal-mart for $139, then took it to my ex-mother-in-law for her approval. We set it up on her kitchen table, she sat down and took it for a spin, and she thought it was a fairly good machine for the money. She suggested we have a sewing play date. It was a date.
I took the machine home and played with it like a kid on Christmas morning, then went to Hancock’s for the fabric. When the sewing date arrived, I showed up at her doorstep with my machine and a shoebox of fabric, eager to get started. Up the stairs we went to her studio. We got the table and machine set up, she gave me a lesson on the rotary cutter, and then she left me to cut — right there to guide me whenever I needed her. I’m sure I asked her a million questions. She did not seem to mind.
Then I started sewing, following the pattern directions very carefully. But as I pieced my block, the pieces came out inaccurate. My fabric was wavy. Nothing came out square. I asked my ex-mother-in-law what could be causing it, and she asked me to bring the block over so she could have a look. She examined it, asked what kind of block I was making — I told her I didn’t know, whatever the book was telling me — and asked to see the book. Once she read the pattern, she knew right away. You’re making a miniature quilt, she told me, which can be more difficult for a beginner. But she’d told me to choose a smaller quilt. She hadn’t meant miniature. She’d meant a lap size or a twin, as opposed to a king or queen. What I had actually chosen was a log cabin wall hanging, 32 inches, made with 4″ blocks. You know, to this day I’ve never sewn a log cabin block.
A little discouraged, I threw the fabric back in the shoebox and gave up for the day. But I was determined. I went back to Hancock’s, bought more fabric — this time a rainbow palette — and set the blocks in black. I picked another pattern, one with larger blocks than those 4″ ones.
From that moment on, the rest is history, as they say. I never did look back.
Qubee Quilts started in 2009, back when quilting blogs were still a new thing — before Instagram, when a blog was just somebody’s corner of the internet and the comments were where everybody gathered. A group of us quilting bloggers all knew each other, read each other, and cheered each other on, and a large group of us went to quilt market back when it was cool — Jule of Jaybird Quilts, John Adams of Quilt Dad, Ryan Walsh of Just a Guy Who Quilts, Pam Kitty of Pam Kitty Morning, Cherry of Cherry House Quilts, Monica of Happy Zombie, Katy Jones of I’m a Ginger Monkey, Rachelle Griffith of P.S. I Quilt, and Ashley of Film in the Fridge. That crew was the world this blog was born into.
I wonder what has happened to these people. I guess we all went our separate ways, and life got in the way. Blogging takes time — lots of time — and it doesn’t necessarily pay the bills.
In 2010 I wrote “Finding Acceptance in A Woman’s World” for Quiltposium, an online quilt magazine, and that article led to my welcome into the Kansas City Modern Quilt Guild. I wish I still had a copy, because it showed how quilting was not socially accessible to a male — and gay on top of that. I had to fight long and hard to be standing where I am today, not only as a quilter, but as a gay male too.
Hell, I was fighting sexism when I sold sewing machines, too. Women thought just because I was male, I did not know how to sew — only sell the machines. I had to prove them wrong each time. Ma’am, I would not be here if I did not know how to sew.
When I first got an apartment, I sewed in a walk-in closet. I’ve since blown the doors off that closet in every part of my life — and I’m happier for it.
I make modern quilts with traditional bones — classic blocks in modern color, plenty of negative space, and no pastels if I can help it. I spent 19 years as a Husqvarna Viking dealer, so I know machines the way only someone who has sold, fixed, and sewn on them for years can. My primary machine is the Husqvarna Viking Epic 97 (I also own a Designer Epic).
Here you’ll find real talk and works in progress, not just finished quilts. If a block fights me, you’ll hear about it. If a fabric makes me happy, you’ll hear about that too.
Keep in touch: Threads, Instagram, Facebook.
And a little more… I LOVE: quilting, camping, Legos, Star Wars, Funko.
If you want to know the real me — well, you just did.