Margaret Willingham, the designer, teaching a workshop in Greeley, Colorado.

Two things inspire me with Eye of the Beholder Quilt Designs: Creating things of beauty, and helping others to find their creative voice while gaining the skills to make beautiful things. Behind me in all of this is God, the ultimate creator of all beauty.

I grew up with a legacy of family heirlooms. Antiques passed down with love and history that were relished and used. Among the furniture, china and silver was the hand work of my ancestors: lovely linens and quilts hand-stitched with decorative threads to grace a table or a bed. All expressions of the makers’ love for their families and friends, and hope in the future expressed creatively.

These patterns for appliqué and reverse appliqué will give the quilt-maker in you the opportunity to create a beautiful heirloom of your own to enjoy and pass on to the next generation. I teach workshops to empower you to make these designs, but for those of you unable to attend, each pattern has complete instructions and I have technique tutorials on the website.

Many of these designs were inspired by the craftsman’s work of the Victorian Era. The Victorians, for all their gilded gaudiness, had an eye for beauty, and imbued the necessary functionality of a thing with graceful scrolls & swirls, adding a touch of elegance to their lives.

I love that touch of elegance. Quilting gives us the chance to decorate the lives of those we love with a touch of elegance, whether in a wall-hanging, a table runner or a bed-sized quilt. I see design possibilities all around me- on book covers, sidewalk grates, railings and even tire rims

As I create these pattern designs for you to make, I get to play with pattern, color and texture, making something beautiful to enliven my world and express love to those around me. I am most at peace when I am creating, and I believe touches of beauty bring resting places of peace to others as well. When you make one of these patterns, you get to do the same thing.

Happy quilting! Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder, you.

Margaret Brewster Willingham