Spotlight: Meags & Me, Quilt Designers

This mother/daughter team has found a common creative passion, and they make the most of it! They design fun and happy quilts and share how to make them with the rest of us. The whimsical and contemporary designs of Meags & Me patterns are fresh and attainable for quilters of all experience. Such a pleasure to share a little bit more about them!

How long have you been sewing and quilting? How did you get started? And, what is your creative niche?

We’ve been sewing as long as we can remember. 8 years ago, we decided to start designing quilt patterns. Even though we argued about a business name (Mom won), we knew we wanted to make a Little Bunny Foo Foo quilt. We drew tiny pictures, and decided to embroider the fairy and appliqué the pieces. We pieced the quilt around our pictures, drawing the piecing out on graph paper. The quilt ended up being 58-1/2” x 58” – which still makes us laugh. If we could do it over again, we would enlarge our pictures and make it a perfect square, but it’s still one of our favorites.

Do you dabble in other creative endeavors or mediums? If so, tell us more!

Kristi knits beautifully and sells heirloom dolls and Meags has a graphic design-based Etsy shop.

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When is your most productive time for creating?

Late nights when there are no children around and we have access to diet Coke and chocolate.

What is your favorite storage tip for your creative supplies?

Ikea bookshelves in the closets.

What is your typical day like?

Meagan has 4 active children that she chases all day, and when they go to bed, she designs late in the evening. Kristi works in an office for part of the day, comes home and crafts/designs. She loves to go to bed at a reasonable time, unlike Meagan who is often up until wee hours of the morning. She loves to send texts to Kristi at 2 am and wake her up with new ideas. We try to have weekly business meetings every Saturday night often over sushi where we get together and design and plan.

What inspires your pattern designs?

Lots of things – sometimes it’s simply designing a new baby quilt for someone, other times it may be a cute fabric design that catches our eye, and often we find ourselves drawing on napkins at restaurants while talking about our business and ideas.

When embarking upon a project, do you pre-plan your entire endeavor or do you simply follow where your inspiration takes you?

Usually, we have a general idea of what we want the finished quilt to look like. Luckily, we think alike and usually are on the same page. We’ll design a general layout, then draw up the artwork, scaling to size as needed.

Are there indispensable tools in your studio? How do they improve your work? Where are they available?

First, a good rotary cutter – we like the weighted cutters by Quilters Select. We love to use fusible-web made by Soft Fuse because it’s so light weight and easy to appliqué and stitch through multiple layers. For all of our embroidery work, we adore Sulky Petites thread – it comes on a spool and is a dream to stitch with. Our new favorite thing is the wool ironing mats which we found at market. We love it because it helps prevent our embroidery work from getting too flat.

Tell us about your most challenging piece. What were the obstacles and how did you get past them?

We once fell in love with a fabric line by Doohickey Designs called Wistful Winds. We imagined a giraffe and flowers quilt, with the yellow and orange motif, but when it came to drawing and getting a general idea for the layout we were stuck. It was a large appliqué block and we hated how it looked when it was vertical. So we slept on it and decided to keep our semi-usual horizontal large panel quilt and have the giraffe leaning his head down to sniff the flowers.

What do you do to keep yourself motivated and interested in your work?

Well, the emails never stop and we always have deadlines. And Meagan seems to only work with deadlines, so it works out perfectly. In addition, there are two us and we seem to keep each other going.

What is your favorite accomplishment?

Our most favorite was the first handful of Instagram followers that were complete strangers to us.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received?

To go to quilt market, and we’d be fine. We really enjoy market now, but still feel overwhelmed by the amazing designers around us. But we are always glad when we go. We love the energy and new connections we make.

What is your advice for someone starting out in your field?

Try not care so much about what you think will or won’t sell – just create what you love. Our most popular designs have always been ones that we both adore.

Who or what has helped you to persevere and not quit?

Well there are 2 of us and we’re related. So even though Kristi says she’s ready to throw in the towel and Meagan drags her feet at calling our printer, or buys a booth at quilt market on the fly, Kristi loves Meagan enough to keep going.