Home: Pepperell, Massachusetts and live online streaming for guilds.
Author, pattern designer, and national quilting instructor Beth Helfter has one rule about quilting – it’s supposed to be fun. Along with her company motto of “Inspired Designs, Relaxed Attitude,” Beth brings visionary designs and techniques to her patterns and exuberance and encouragement to the classroom.
Beth prefers to dig into her stash to create designs and patterns that appeal to her senses of color and value, using as many different fabrics as possible. Keeping to just a few color families in each quilt palette is one of her best tricks to keeping scrappy quilts from getting out of hand but allowing them to sing with tone and movement. Her popular lecture “Consistency in the Chaos” showcases several ways of looking at categories of scraps as it seeks to inspire quilters to think about scrap quilts and pull fabrics to make them shine without overwhelming the eye. Beth has decided she will never solve the mystery of why even scrap quilters can never use up their fabrics, and no longer even tries.
Her penchant for scraps and her need to use as many fabrics as possible in her quilts led her in 2017 to develop the Accordion Sewn HSTs™ method of creating half square triangles that don’t have a match and yet waste no fabric. Delving into the method further, she discovered “ordering” the accordions could lead to the creation of whole blocks and quilts from a single accordion.
Her first book on the method “Oompah! Jazz Up Your Scrap Quilts With Accordion Sewn HSTs™” was published in 2018, and “Another Round of Oompah” was published in 2020. It’s been called “life-changing,” “magical,” “addictive,” and, her favorite, “witchcraft,” and is the basis for her “Oompah! Accordion Sewn HSTs™ lecture and many of her most popular workshops. She’s currently at work on new variations of the basic Accordion Sewn HSTs™ for patterns and workshops.
As a traveling quilt teacher, she’s taught for guilds coast to coast, and never tires of the ah-ha moments and banter of a classroom full of quilters.
Visit Beth’s website: EvaPaige Quilts
Visit Beth’s YouTube Channel: EvaPaige Quilt Designs
Email Beth: evapaigequilts @ charter.net (remove spaces)
Here’s Beth’s portion of an interview among national quilt teachers done in May 2020:
Please let Beth know you found her on The Quilter’s Calendar!
