“If it has a curve, we can figure it out.”
Sew Kind of Wonderful is a boutique, modern quilting company that specializes in designing patterns and products centered around their award-winning Quick Curve Ruler©. It is owned by three sisters: Jenny Pedigo, Helen Robinson, and Sherilyn Mortensen. Helen began quilting in 1997, followed by Sherilyn in 1998, and then Jenny, in 2002. All three sisters are Gammill artists.
How did Sew Kind of Wonderful Begin?
When Jenny was looking for some work she could do at home while raising her 6 children, Helen suggested she try longarm quilting. Jenny’s response? “What’s that?”
Jenny went right to work practicing longarm skills. She bought a used Gammill machine with a 14-foot table and joined a longarm guild near her home in Everett, Washington. She picked up customers from a quilt shop down the road and learned quickly that longarm quilting “was a lot of work!!” Jenny encourages quilt makers to “hug your longarm quilter.” She really loved her longarm work and had quilted over 1,000 quilts. But about after 6 years into it, she was burning out and felt she needed to do something different.
Jenny started playing with curving and decide that she wanted to design curve edged quilts. She couldn’t understand why everyone seemed to be “so scared about curves.” Jenny figured out that her curve fetish would go a lot smoother if she had a ruler that not only was curved but also had a grid for squaring up blocks. There was nothing like that on the market, so she graphed her idea on some graph paper and took it to a local company to manufacture. A year and a half later, the first Quick Curve Ruler© was created.
The Quick Curve Ruler©
It wasn’t long that Helen and Sherilyn caught Jenny’s curve ruler vision. Together, they combined ideas and today they have come up with over 100 designs using their Quick Curve Ruler©.
The Quick Curve Ruler (QCR) makes cutting curves fast, easy and consistent. The sisters developed their QCR technique of Cut-Sew-Square-Up that allows for working with the bias, and the square-up step ensures blocks are concise, consistent for piecing the final product. There are three QCR rulers on their website. Each is a different size and has a different curve.
Their patterns are made in series. The first series was called Urban; the second was called Decco; and the third is called Metro. Their most popular quilt to date is from the Metro Series and is called, Metro Rings. It is a double wedding ring pattern made from five jelly rolls, stitched together and then cut with a curved ruler. Jenny says, “It is fast and easy.”
Sew Kind of Wonderful at Road 2020
Jenny and Sherilyn did a Sew Kind of Wonderful Trunk Show as a $5.00 Lecture at Road 2020, sharing many of their original designs.
Sherilyn came up with the idea for Mod Strawberries while she was on the treadmill.
Posh Santa is a favorite pattern. A Mrs. Claus design will be available in July.
The sisters are always on the lookout for new ideas from what is trending in the home decorating world.
Emojis, letters and numbers are some of their favorites right now.
Sew Kind of Wonderful has certainly made quilting with curves fun!! Visit their website for patterns, rulers and more. They also have You Tube videos that provide easy to follow instructions.
