About Heirloom Quilts

About Heirloom Quilts

The beginning of the new century saw the commencement of Heirloom Quilts. Many of the quilts in our growing range are presently traditional patterns with just a sprinkling of contemporary designs. However, I hope that in the months to come we will have some exciting new designs.

Here at Heirloom Quilts we endeavour to offer you the opportunity to create beautiful quilts in the comfort of your own home. Combining colours to create your masterpiece can be a rather daunting, and in some cases an expensive exercise. We have created a user friendly system whereby you can see what your quilt will look like using a variety of colour combinations and fabrics. Throughout the website simply click on the colour option number and immediately the quilt will be displayed in the new colour option.

Through the Heirloom Quilts web-site, Pattern Drafting service, the Quilter's Club and Newsletter, we will endeavour to meet your quilting needs. If we cannot assist you, we will either research the answer for you or put you in touch with an expert in the particular field.

Helen McLean, Proprietor of Heirloom Quilts

Let me introduce myself: I am a grandmother with three grown children and one grandson. I live with my many quilts, two cats, Sam and Basil and a beautiful Kelpie/Border Collie called Tess.

My first attempt at patchwork was a small cot quilt for my first child. This quilt was a hexagon pattern using the English paper method. At that time there were virtually no books available on patchwork and, because I found the paper method very tedious, that quilt was never finished. It wasn't until I discovered the American method during the late seventies, that I again became enthralled with the prospect of beautiful quilts, this time without the frustration of cutting endless paper templates that sometimes didn't fit together correctly.

My passion to see the quilt finished, lead to a complusiveness whereby I had to sew every day. If that wasn't achieved I would experience a sense of frustration and failure. My early quilts were completely machined pieced and quilted. This became quite expensive so I changed to hand piecing and quilting. By slowing down the process, I discovered that I too felt calmer, more in control of the quilt rather than the quilt controlling me. Quiltmaking had become a therapy for me when I didn't know I needed therapy.

Over the years I have taught classes and workshops, machine pieced and hand quilted quilts for clients, and created many banners and hangings for churches . A friendship group of quilters met weekly in my home for 6 years prior to my return to study. Now the opportunity has come for me to again enjoy the creativity and relaxation of quilting. This time there is the added bonus of enjoying it with ladies from much farther afield than my own neighbourhood.