JanieH

I participated in a BOM from her and will NEVER do one again! I spent so much money on templates and now they just sit. Plus every block I did with them came out wacky. Give me plain old measurements anytime - I can deal with them!

sandraphippard

I took this years block of the month, just finished last block, and love it. Her templates are great for accuracy, glad I took it. The quilt shop that offered it only required that we purchase a and c templates, charged us $5.00 for first block and $5.00 for first set up, after that as long as we brought finished block to next month meeting. We received the next block, pattern and fabric free. If we missed a meeting, we had to pay another $5.00 to get the block.

Jan in VA

She did have that effect on people, didn't she. And yet her work was meticulous, creative, colorful, and surprisingly easy to understand.

She didn't demand the 1/4 inch seam rule, but that did NOT mean she accepted slap dash piecing. She knew that whatever your own PPM was (PPM=your personal private measurement as near a 1/4 inch seam as you were comfortable), as long as you used it throughout your whole quilt it would work just fine!!! Don't believe it? Try it some time.

Jan in VA

quiltingshorttimer

Don't know anything about Marti Michell BOM's, but I did buy her ruler/template that allows you to make sashing with 3 different star cornerstones--really easy to make a complex looking quilt just by having fancy sashings. But definitely important to mark things instead of just "eyeballing it"!

ItsPatti

Hi Jan, I work for Marti but my last job was as a quilt magazine writer. I was recently asked by Web Cents for the 21st Century Retailer magazine to write an article about Marti and they just published it; I got a nice 4-page spread! I thought I could add something to this part of the discussion, based on some things I learned about Marti's early quilting history. She actually started out selling quilt kits and championed strip techniques when the rotary cutter came to the US.

Quoting from the article: "Marti's first company, Yours Truly, Inc., was the first national purveyor of products designed by and for quilters; the first publisher of books written by quilters (like Fons and Porter, others) to be sold in quilt shops; and the first company to promote and teach the rotary cutter and strip techniques through Yours Truly's "It's Okay If You Sit on My Quilt" seminars for teachers and shop owners, week-long seminars led by Mary Ellen Hopkins. 'It's hard to believe today, but in those days, machine quilting was a no-no. However, when Harriet Hargrave came to one of the first seminars and showed me a sample of her beautiful free-motion machine quilting, I was sold,' and Harriet joined the seminar staff."

YT employed 175 people! There was also a YT line of fabric -- the company literally sold everything you needed to make a quilt at a time when there weren't many quilt shops yet. Marti combined strips and templates in 1995 and has added a new tool to the line every year since, coming up on 20 years now. I've worked for her almost that long, so I am biased toward Perfect Patchwork Templates, of course!

It was a fun article to write. Maybe you remember YT. I'm a quiltosaur, I started quilting when there weren't many quilt shops and everything stopped whenever a new YT catalog arrived in the mail so I could read it cover to cover -- I remember being so grateful to be able to get short, fine applique needles!

Terri D.

I know what you mean. It's a class designed to sell merchandise, a lot of which you could possibly do without. She's in business to make money, which is perfectly legitimate, but when all is said and done, it boils down to cost vs. benefit. If you think you will be making more of her designs, the investment in her tools and rulers might be worth it; possibly not if you think this will be a one time thing. Good luck with your decision!

SueSew

I have no prejudice about templates. Why would I?

I did one of my first projects from a block on Quilter's Cache which used templates. I had no preconceived notion about whether they were bad for me, and if I had made better ones the blocks would have been better maybe, but they were clever and get a lot of compliments.

I just bought a Sue Garman BOM pattern Washington Medallion which may kill me but the paper-piecing templates are fine, the problem is my lack of skill to go inside-out upside-down backwards in a consistent pattern.

I finished a landscape quilt where I made my own templates from modified photographs of the things I was trying to copy. I did a couple simple appliques with templates.

So fine, I'll pay for a template.

A template is more accurate than a measurement - ask any carpenter who has ever used a story-pole. Marking is more accurate than a ruler.

But I draw the line (pun not intended) at gimmick rulers. Especially if the pattern seller tells you that you have to buy their proprietary ruler. Nonsense. Every 'specialty pattern' ruler I've seen has been doable with a ruler, or a hand-drawn mark on a ruler, or a template.

SueSew

Love the Mighty ZipLok Graveyard! That's where my Judy Niemyer quilt project is. A waste of good batik. The instructions were full of errors and the pre-class homework (after downloading corrections from her site) was still wrong. You really got me laughing. No more UFO's for me!!!

And you are right about Storm at Sea - you can buy a template - one plastic ruler- or not. Go by Ellen Burns. Someone in my quilting group did one and it was a stunner.

ItsPatti

But that's the beauty of the templates -- they are standard sizes and shapes, so you can use them for many quilt designs. If it's the 3-inch square set, for example, the 6 other shapes in the set fit with the square or inside the square, so you can make loads of 9 patch and 12 patch block designs with them.

eparys

I have done two BOMs at my LQS that are Marti Michell's. I can not stand to use templates AND I am cheap. I go home and draw the block in EQ and paper piece them. The most recent one is based on a 7x7 grid. I draw the grid - draw the block snapping to the nodes of the grid and I am ready to sew. What is even better they are square and flat when done!