About me: My mother, a talented watercolor artist, accomplished gardener and seamstress, gave me my first sewing machine when I was 5 years old. For the next 40 years I made clothes for my family and myself, costumes for my son and once I made each brother a down coat. When my son was on his way to college, a friend invited me to make a memory quilt out of his t-shirts for his dorm bed. When the last stitch was clipped on that first quilt top, I was literally compelled to drive to a fabric store to buy fabric for my next quilt. I found some brilliant jewel toned batiks and designed a single bed quilt for my mom’s bed. She was bed bound most of the time at that point and the quilt brightened up her room. It was not until then that I noticed that my great grandmother’s quilts were on the bunk beds in mom’s house and in a closet was a quilt a great aunt had made out of her husband’s work shirts. Quilting must be in my blood. It is not unusual for me to have 3 quilt tops on design walls in my home. My fabric closet is full. I am hooked. Designing and creating quilts is my new passion.

About the name Rena Zimmerman Designs: When I finally decided to learn Hebrew, study to be a Bat Mitzva and choose a Hebrew name, I chose Rena as my first name. Rena means joy. A few years ago in a guided meditation the guide directed me to choose a name. Joy came to me then and I wrote it down but hadn’t remembered it until recently. When I ask myself if I want to be right or happy, I choose happy every time. So, Rena it is. My father’s last name was Carpenter which generations ago, was translated from Zimmerman, a room builder. Zimmerman means builder in Hebrew and I love to build quilts, gardens to gather in and community. Hence the name, Rena Zimmerman Designs is a perfect fit. I enjoy choosing the colors and fabrics. I usually design my own patterns and I really enjoy the process of placing the pieces of the quilt on the design wall. It is during this process that I am in flow. I believe that there are no coincidences and that I found quilting for a reason.

I spent the first thirty years of my life unhappy, confused and looking for answers. After years of workshops, introspection and soul searching, I have learned that happiness and serenity are a choice. When I am making a quilt top all the pieces fit into a beautiful whole and I relax. Either a piece fits or it doesn’t. I can tell by the way I feel when I look at it if it is a fit. If I take a deep breath and smile, it belongs there. If I am not sure, then I move it until I feel the fit. This is a metaphor for how I live my life. If “it” feels good to my heart, it stays in my life, if it doesn’t I make a change, whether it’s a relationship, a job or a quilt top. My perception of Karma is that “Karma simply deals with what is. The effects of all deeds actively create past, present and future experiences, thus making one responsible for one's own life” (www.crystalinks.com/karma.html paragraph 2. The Law of Attraction presented by Abraham and Ramses through Esther Hicks and Kristen Martel continue to remind me to feel what I feel when I feel it, to go toward the next better feeling and to create the reality of my dreams. I build beautiful quilts because it feels good to my heart. I feel joy as I am creating the quilt and people feel joy when they look at the finished product. That is why I have named my business Rena Zimmerman Designs.

About my quilts: I am a quilt top maker. Nature and its beauty and vivid colors and designs make my heart sing. Judiasm touches my soul. I have a wonderful eye for color, which I’m guessing I got from my mom. I combine two or more of those elements in most of my quilts. I usually use 100% high quality cotton fabrics from small, personally owned fabric stores because I find the colors don’t run or fade and they can be washed and dried. I use 100% cotton thread because it is strong and washable. I claim that my quilts are unique because no two of my quilts are alike or to my knowledge like anyone else’s.

First I (or we) choose the pattern. I may design a pattern for a particular quilt or use a tried and true pattern designed by someone else. Then we shop for the fabrics. Our fabric choice often starts with a color palette or an inspiration fabric. An inspiration fabric is a fabric that one sees and falls in love with at first sight. When I have the fabric and the pattern I cut the pieces and place them on a design wall so we can see if the quilt top is coming together as we had envisioned. At that point we can easily make changes to create the desired result.

When we are happy with the color and design, I sew the pieces together on my little electric Jenome Gem machine. I usually sew 10 stitches per inch for strength and use a standard ¼” seam allowance. When the quilt top is finished, we decide on the fabric for the binding and the back. Then, we choose a quilting design and thread color. If the quilts are small I quilt them myself, if they are large I send the quilt to a talented “quilter” and he/she puts them all into a sandwich with the quilt top on top, batting in the middle and the backing on the bottom and she quilts them all together on her long arm machine. When it comes back to me in the mail, I sew on the binding and a label and the creation is complete.