Midnight Quilts

Lerlene Nevaril has been interested in needle arts since the age of five, when her grandmother taught her to make doll clothes on a treadle sewing machine. She went from there to making her own clothes, and then to knitting, embroidery, and needlepoint. In 1979, she picked up a copy of Quilter's Newsletter magazine, and she has been quilting ever since. A desire to have someone else to talk quilting with led her to organize a quilt guild in Sioux City, Iowa, and serve as its first president. In 1988, she served as a regional coordinator for the Iowa Quilt Research Project. In 1996, with a business partner, Lerlene opened Heart & Hand Dry Goods Co., a quilt shop in Sioux City. In 1999, Heart & Hand was one of the ten shops featured in American Patchwork and Quilting's Quilt Sampler magazine. Lerlene published her first book, Hidden Block Quilts, in 2002, and she left her quilt shop the following year to devote more time to traveling and writing. She wrote Crowning Glories, another hidden block book, in 2005 and Over Easy: Creative Ideas for Pieced Quilt Backs in 2006. Lerlene has appeared as a guest on Simply Quilts with Alex Anderson and has taught and lectured for shops and guilds from Minnesota to Colorado to Florida. She taught at the 2004 Houston Quilt Festival and has had several of her quilts published in McCall's Quilting magazine. Lerlene currently lives in Oklahoma. For more information on her teaching schedule, lectures, and classes, visit her website at www.lerlenenevaril.com.