The Art Of Quilting And Creative Events with Kat Molesworth

Join us this week for an inspiring conversation with Kat Molesworth — master quilter, creative event curator, and passionate maker. 

Kat takes us through her journey from her early career in the creative industry to mastering the art of quilting. She opens up about the challenges and triumphs of her sewing journey, her work bringing creative communities together through events, and the joy she finds in every stitch. 

Packed with insights, stories, and heartfelt advice, this episode is a must-listen for quilters, makers, and anyone inspired by creativity and community.

Key Takeaways:

• Kat has a diverse background in creative industries.
• She transitioned from various jobs to focus on events for bloggers and creators.
• Community and connection through social media have been pivotal in her journey.
• Running thoughtful events can transform attendees' lives and businesses.
• Kat emphasises the importance of considering all attendees' needs at events.
• She is the youngest master quilter, showcasing her dedication to the craft.
• Her quilting style blends traditional and modern techniques.
• Exhibiting at the Festival of Quilts is a significant milestone for her.
• Kat encourages aspiring quilters to have fun and make for loved ones.
• She highlights the undervaluation of handmade crafts and the need for makers to assert their worth.

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Guest details: 

Instagram: @thatkat

Tiktok: superthatkat

Job role: Programming Coordinator for Immediate Live's Craft Portfolio

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Kat Molesworth

01:39 Kat's Creative Career Journey

09:27 Event Planning in the Creative Industry

11:47 Kat's Sewing Journey and Quilting Beginnings

13:46 Becoming a Master Quilter

16:16 Quilting Styles and Inspirations

19:04 Exhibiting at the Festival of Quilts

23:46 Advice for Aspiring Quilters

26:36 Future Plans and Exciting Projects

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Transcript

Speaker 2 (00:00.344)

Kat, welcome to the Sewing Social podcast. I'm so excited to have you on today. Would you mind introducing yourself to the listeners?

Thank you for having me Gemma. My name is Kat Molesworth. I have been a menace on the internet since the last century. My background is in events for people whose business is social media. I am a master quilter and I currently work for Immediate Live running their five events programming for workshops and talks.

Amazing. And we are going to touch on all of those things today. Firstly, wanted to talk about your sort of work background. So you've got quite a creative background, haven't you Kat? From hosting your own podcast, vlogging and curating events for bloggers and small businesses. Can you talk through your career journey and how you got to where you are today?

When I turned 18, I had no sense of what I wanted to do with my life. really couldn't imagine applying to university at that point. So I moved to London with a friend and I got a job working in hospital labs, which I absolutely loved. And I thought, yes, this is it. I will be a doctor. It turned out no. I kind of bounced through a lot of jobs in my late teens and early twenties. Everything I am really enthusiastic about and I really enjoy, but I never really found something that I was 100%.

committed to and loved. When I was 27, I had my first child and I retrained as a child minder so I could work at home. And over the next few years, one of the things that really sustained me was blogging and social media and connecting with other people. And I think in between my first child, when I had a blog and Twitter and my third child, when Instagram came out, you we saw this massive blossoming of online community and

Speaker 1 (01:50.7)

like friendship and the idea of making things for yourself and you could just have a go at anything. It all really sort of flourished at that time. And I got more and more frustrated that in the US we were seeing these really cool, fun events for bloggers and creators and people with online businesses. And in the UK, what was on offer just didn't really meet the requirements that I had. They didn't meet my hopes for an event and they just weren't cool.

A friend of mine and I decided that we would set up our own event. And I don't think we really anticipated actually how hard it is running events for hundreds of people, but we created Blogtacular and that ran for five events. it was just, honestly, it was phenomenal. COVID and Brexit kind of killed it off, which is a real shame. And then I started working on other people's events. Now, the whole time that I was doing this, I was also

videographer, a photographer, I was consulting for brands, I was doing work for people behind the scenes on their social media. I was doing huge amounts of other freelance work. But then I went in-house to work with Content is Queen on their International Women's Podcast Festival. did two rounds of that. I also worked at Union's 21, which is Union's think tank as their head of operations, which was really fun and enjoyable. Then this job, a dream job, immediate live came up and

Very luckily, one of my quilting friends sent it to me and said, do you know they're hiring? This would be your job. And I saw it and I thought, yeah, that will be my job. And that's where I am now. So that's 18 to 25 years in a very short span of time.

Amazing. And like you say, you've done a variety of jobs in your time. Have you sort of self-taught yourself all of these social media skills with your photography and your videography, or did you go on courses and things for that?

Speaker 1 (03:50.286)

So my father and my grandfather were both really keen photographers and my grandfather was a really great videographer. So I was the person in my generation who was also interested in learning that. Now, unfortunately, my father died when I was really young, so I didn't get to spend much time with him. But when his obituary was in the paper, the photo was taken by me, an eight-year-old. you know, I've always really loved that and I've always wanted to be involved.

And to a degree, I was allowed some access. And so when I got the tools creation myself, I just spent time trying to be good at it, trying to essentially create what I wanted to see in the world. One of the things that I used to do online before Blogtacular is the same friend Kat Golden, who now runs Goat Radio. She and I ran Capturing Childhood, which was an online school for people who wanted to take better films and photos of their children.

And we would teach people how to not just take technically good pictures, but take the kind of pictures that you want to look at over and over and over again for the rest of somebody's life that means something that capture who they are. And I think, you know, we really, I really enjoyed that. And that's to me was, you know, one of my favourite things about photography. Unfortunately, I don't get to do as much photography as I would like any longer. And I'm certainly not vlogging currently.

doesn't mean I won't, yeah, just, essentially, if you want to learn how to do anything, there is a wonderful geek on the internet who's already either written a blog post or made a video to teach you how to do it and you can learn anything. And that's how I really managed to cement my skills.

I've personally followed you for quite a long time actually and especially back in those blogtacular days and I used to look at that event because I didn't do any sort of blogging or anything at the time and I looked at it and I was like, this looks incredible. It was so colourful, so creative. What do you think it is that you love about running events in the creative industries?

Speaker 1 (05:57.784)

think what I really love is that if you really think about your customer at an event and you really think about what they need and what's enjoyable for somebody on the day and how to properly consider them and their needs, you can absolutely transform somebody's life. They can have a wonderful day out, but also they can take away the skills they need to transform their business. We have people who went from making no money to making full-time living through their blog and social media because...

They came, they paid attention in the workshops and that gave them the tools they needed to go on and support their whole family, which I absolutely love. And then also, things like, I feel really passionately about food intolerances and food allergies. I grew up with a parent who had celiac disease and nobody advocated for them ever. They were never thought of and people would say, this is okay. And they'd be offering them a cake. It's not okay.

I always work on sort of that scale of event where you're dealing with hundreds, not thousands of people, but where you're dealing with hundreds of people. I always work on the principle that the people who have it the hardest with food are the people that you're going to consider first. So there were times when the whole menu didn't contain certain ingredients so that one or two guests would have a day where they didn't have to feel stressed. And I know that that impacts on people and like instantly allows them to relax. think, you know, when we were looking at workshops and who could speak and...

Like what they could offer to people. We're always thinking about what's the impact for somebody who's coming to this workshop. What are they going to take away and how's that going to change their life? And I think that's really why they were so much fun and why people really enjoyed them is because we really cared about what they did. Less so about making money, which is potentially our downfall, but you can't have it all.

No, and that probably stood you away from the pack because like you say, sometimes individuals aren't considered at all. So it sounds like you were really thoughtful about the customers and the people attending your events. You said that you've obviously landed your dream job at Immediate Live now. So they run the knit and stitch show, the festival of quilts and things like that. And Stitch Festival, how can I forget that one? That's one of my favourites.

Speaker 1 (08:09.762)

and Stitch Festival.

Speaker 2 (08:14.57)

Is there anything in particular that you look for when people are applying to either teach at the shows that you coordinate or exhibit at them?

So I don't have much involvement in the exhibitors because we have a wonderful sales team who look after our stand holders. And I think if you've come to Knit and Stitch, Stitch Festival or Festival of Quilts, what you'll really notice about our exhibitors is they are 100 % in your category. If you've come there because you love knitting, you're going to find amazing yarn dyers. You're going to find wonderful knitting patterns. You're going to find crochet kits. You're going to find...

dress patterns if you're coming in, you're a dressmaker. Everything there is really relevant to what you want as a customer. And I love that, especially because I do go to these events myself as a customer. In terms of workshops, we have an incredible existing team of teachers who have taught at the shows for a couple of years or like a long number of years. And I was very lucky in that my predecessor, Wendy Gardner, I was incredibly talented at what she did. And I have stepped onto

a moving train. So when we're looking at what we have to offer and proposals coming in, maybe from somebody who hasn't taught before or somebody who hasn't taught in a while, we're really thinking about the demographic who we have coming, the kind of people who come, what are they interested in? What do they like to spend some time doing? Because when you're at a show, maybe for only one day, if you're going to sit down for an hour to two hours doing a workshop, that has to be a brilliant workshop. You have to have a really great time. And I think all of our teachers offer that.

They're so varied, know, people have such interesting crafts. We're actually speaking just ahead of the London knit and stitch show at Alexandra Palace. And we've got people who are doing embossing, we've got knitting, we've got crochet, we've got Tunisian crochet, which is kind of half knitting, half crochet. We've got people doing free motion embroidery, you can make a coil pot on the sewing machine. There's just so many different things. Loads of really cool dressmaking skills.

Speaker 1 (10:16.022)

you know, printing, dyeing, all sorts. And there's like a real variety. So I know that somebody who's coming with their children can find half a dozen workshops really easily that both they and their children are really going to enjoy. And then I know that somebody who's a really experienced seamstress who wants to work on a particular skill is going to find the workshop that she's looking for and that's going to make her sewing even better. And I think, you know, that's the real beauty of immediate life shows is that they really do think about.

exactly what the customer wants and they work on delivering that year round.

Awesome. I'm very excited to come to the Knit and Stitch show next week. No, this week, this weekend. let's talk about your sewing journey. Are you completely self-taught and what sort of projects did you start your journey with?

I know,

Speaker 1 (11:07.662)

think when I was a child, my mum did try and teach me to sew and she had a sewing machine that my dad's father had given her as a wedding present that she absolutely cherishes. She won't even replace it now because it's such a special gift from him. But I wasn't hugely interested. I did customise my clothes through the nineties and we had a really great textiles department at our school, but I wasn't favoured by the teachers. I didn't end up going down that route. Although one of my classmates ended up being a fashion designer, which is...

phenomenal. So I kind of dabbled with it. And then in my mid-twenties, I decided I was going to buy a machine and I was going to make cushions for the house. And then I was going to make cushions and sell them on eBay. And it turns out I wasn't good enough to make cushions for other people. These things are hard, who knew? But I've had that sewing machine say like for over 20 years now, it's still in the cupboard. I don't use it as often because it's quite a basic model and I didn't oil it.

for probably a good 10 to 15 of those years. So was really noisy towards the end. But yeah, so I kind of sewed off and on and I had some really like fun oil cloth projects that I made. And I used to like to sew with odd materials. But then again, one of the big catalysts for me spending more time sewing was having my first child. Like I used to make her clothes and I started quilting not very well at first, but you know, I got there in the end. And that really

sort of in my mid to late twenties, that really transports how I approach things because I wanted to make rather than buy. Although, you know, my son does always remind me he's my second child. I started making him a quilt when I was pregnant with my third child, which is not really great for the tolerance levels. And I got so angry that the machine knotted that I put it away and didn't touch it for two years. you know, there have been blips, but know, pregnancy rage aside, you know, I've consistently just

been making things and getting more more attached to sewing as part of what I do every day.

Speaker 2 (13:04.782)

Well, you certainly got better at quilting, didn't you? Because you've recently gained the qualification of the youngest master quilter, is that correct?

I am the master quilter. They've threatened to not run the course again, so I will remain the youngest master quilter forevermore. Wow. I might need to check some birth certificates on the first master quilter course, I'm pretty sure. It's a diploma that the guild were running through Region 2. The Quilters Guild of the British Isles has, I think, 13 regions across the UK and Northern Ireland. Region 2, which is the southeast, so sort of Kent kind of area.

had one of their members sadly passed away and her husband brought her stash and they sold it and raised the money to start the Master Quilter course as a way to give quilters skills. Unfortunately for them, they ran it slap bang in the middle of COVID. So a lot of what had been planned had to be pushed online. But the first group of Master Quilters did like a phenomenal job. They're incredibly inspiring and at the Festival of Quilts, in fact, a few years ago, I saw a display of their journal quilts.

And there was a little note saying, if you want to join this, it's starting next month. And I said to one of my really good friends, think, I think we should do that. And she was like, no, I'm not interested. I've done 16 guilds, don't want to do that. And then a couple of weeks later, she contacted me she's like, maybe we should ask. I asked and fortunately there were two spots left, so we took them. And that was autumn 2023. And for 18 months, every single month, I created a new journal quilt, wrote an essay, and it was just such a brilliant.

course because you really went through all of the basic skills, considered them carefully, wrote about them and then created something to demonstrate that you have mastered that skill. Sometimes it was quite frustrating when you're in the middle of it and you're looking at the marking scheme and that was quite vague as to what you should actually do and maybe the person who taught the course hadn't really covered much of what was in the marking scheme. There were moments of frustration, but as a body of work, I'm so proud of it and it was really enjoyable.

Speaker 1 (15:11.522)

You know, I love gaining new qualifications. So like a diploma and a title makes me incredibly happy.

Do you have a particular quilting style cat and like where would you draw your inspiration from?

I I kind of sit between, I really enjoy traditional quilting. I love hand quilting. I made a quilt for my mother-in-law's birthday and I hand pieced a lone star in the center and then got all of her grandchildren and children to contribute small items and then created very traditional frame quilts around it. I loved making that and I really liked the design of that. But then when I think about the kind of work

that I want to make and display or maybe enter into competitions or things like the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. I think my work is quite modern and it's quite improv. So I really love the freedom of not having to follow the rules of being able to just lay fabric in front of me, cut it without any rulers. I'm not a very strong cutter. So cutting without rulers actually works to my strengths.

and then piece it and build up a picture from there. So my actual master quilt was quite simplistic compared to some other people's work because I went for a modern quilt, but it was all quite complex improv curved piecing. And then it was set in to the background using reverse applique and then very heavily quilted with just random quilt lines that kind of flowed with the curves and all of the threads was colour matched to the fabric, which was an expensive endeavor.

Speaker 1 (16:43.72)

not recommend. But yeah, so I think I kind of sit between two worlds because at the moment Riley Blake have just brought out a block of the month club, Jane Austen quilt and I saw it at Choughton House and I just thought, I have to make that. I love it. So I bought all of the fabric and I've got all of the applique pieces cut out and ready to go. But then also I've got this really mad plan for quilt I want to make for next year that I'm going to try and enter into the summer exhibition and see if it gets anywhere. obviously.

If it doesn't, it'll be at Festival of Quotes. Regardless.

Is that a secret as to what you're planning for that one?

Yes, currently. will be colourful, it'll be improv and I think it'll have some kind of spiritual element to it. And I was planning to make it for my master quilt, but it turned out that I got my job and I just didn't have time to do something quite so ambitious. So it's going to be next year's quilt. When things quieten down in the winter, I'm going to get working on that.

Exciting. And like you say, you've exhibited at the Festival of Quilts a couple of times now. How long does it take to put your piece together for the exhibit? And how do you decide on that piece that you're going to show?

Speaker 1 (17:56.28)

So the first piece I exhibited was actually the quilt I made for my best friend's 40th birthday. It was an improv quilt. It was made largely from Caroline Friedlander fabrics. they would just, she brought out a collection. It was probably five to six years earlier and I saw it and the colours were just so perfect. Like it was the palette of my best friend. I bought a Fat Quarter stack at that point, sat on it and then I added solids from Kona Cotton's.

as recommended by Carolyn in her, in one of her blog posts. Her blog is really exciting. I love it. I love that she adds the solids, the references so that you can add that into the patterns. I think that's a really nice element because I think that's what made the quilt. I think the addition of the solids really made that quilt. That I requested if I could borrow it and display it. It did have some dog eye snot on it, so it didn't win any prizes.

And by the time it got there, it had also burst a seam, unfortunately. But what I really loved about that was I was lurking near the quilt, waiting to get a photo. And I heard people talking about how beautiful they found it. And they saying, I can never make anything like that. And I was like, well, you can. Like I made it and it was just, it was very easy. It looks complex, but I built it up one section at a time. And then this year I put in my master quilt and I made a twin for it.

because I just felt like on its own, I don't know if it lacked anything, but I just felt very strongly that it needed a twin. So I made a twin for it and that I was sewing literally up till the day before my colleague took it to Festival for me in true quilters fashion. I did some work on the quilt comp this year to support my colleagues and the amount of people who I spoke to who said they hadn't put the binding on yet was, it was in line with expectations. That's what I admire about quilters is we won't

be held to a deadline. We will be sewing on until two in the morning. So yeah, that's quite fun. I've got a little list in my phone of quilts I want to make. So I've got a few ideas of things that I think would have fit really well into the competition that I was going to make. But obviously as a member of staff, I can't actually enter that. So those I might save and think about where else they might go in the world and then they can come and be in the joy of sharing at festivals.

Speaker 2 (20:15.04)

Amazing. So would you finish like one event and then immediately think about the next piece that you want to put together? like you say, quilts aren't a quick thing that you just whip up.

I mean, sometimes they are. I mean, like I said, I constantly have a list of quilts that I'm working on. So coming off the back of Festival, I've been making a quilt for my mother because it did feel a little bit unfair that I'd made one for my mother-in-law and not for my own mother. But she has dogs, so this isn't very much a safer quilt. When she doesn't have dogs any longer, she can have a fancy quilt. But I have a constantly a list that I add to of quilts that I'm thinking about making.

that I want to make. So I've been collecting Liberty fabric because I would like to make a grandmother's flower patch quilt, which is like the vintage quilt behind me. I really love English paper piecing. I love sitting and piecing hexagons. So expect more of that in the winter. And I have some of the big ambitious quilts. I have one that I tried to make for the summer exhibition.

that went horribly wrong. I am going to remake it, so I'm not going to tell you exactly what it was, but I was using non-traditional material for quilting and I hadn't really considered how that fabric was going to act. I think that's one of the groundings that doing the master quilter diploma really helped with is we thought a lot more about how fabric behaves, about grain, about how grain actually really does impact a quilt and how it lies. think

I think there's a way forward for the abandoned quilt. And I do have half finished quilts all over the shop. One of my cousins is getting married and I was making a quilt for him and his wife and then they said no presents. So that just sits in a bag now. So maybe for one of their anniversaries, they will get that quilt one day. But yeah, I think, I don't know, I'm quite haphazard. I'm not sure if I'm as good as some of the sort of really professional quilters who year after year, you see their competition quilts come through and you're just like, yes, you've been thinking about that for a long time.

Speaker 2 (22:15.746)

That's fair enough. What do you think would be one piece of advice that you'd give to someone starting their own quilting journey?

I mean, have fun. There are rules and there are things that will make your quilting better and make your finish better and improve, but you don't have to follow them. You can do whatever you like. If you want to quilt with tweed jackets, it will be hard. They will stretch, but you can do that. You can do whatever you like. Quilts, I think, are really, they're a luxury good. The amount of time and energy and money that goes into them, you actually can't.

generally sell quilts for what they're worth on a regular level. you're either somebody who makes art quilts and they're acquired by people with a lot of money or you're regular quilter and people always undervalue that. They will undervalue your time and they will undervalue the materials. I think, you know, when you make quilts, make them for people that you really truly love because you spend a lot of time with that fabric and a lot of time putting yourself into it. So if you're not making them for yourself or for people that you really, really care about.

you might start to resent them a little bit. So have fun, make them people you love and don't expect to sell them.

Great advice, great advice. And I think that goes some, well, pretty much across the board, doesn't it, Cat? Like when you come across handmade goods, they are often undervalued with all the time, effort and materials that go into it. And I don't, I'm not sure how that's ever going to change really, but we can hope.

Speaker 1 (23:47.566)

I think it's a difficult one. I was talking to somebody yesterday who told me that a friend of theirs made a full length Aran coat for somebody and they offered them, they asked for 25 pounds, which is horrendous. And the person said, oh, that's more expensive than I expected. I think as makers, we kind of have to put the brakes on if we want our work to be respected. And we either say that

we only make for ourselves or we only make for people who pay what we're worth. Because, you know, hand knitted jumper, crocheted blanket, those things take time and the materials that go into them are high quality. Like I just look at all of the beautiful yarns that are available at Knit and Stitch and they're delicious. They're so tactile. The hand dyers who come to our events spend so much time considering colour palettes and fastness and, you know, the mix of colours that

If somebody then turns around and they only want to spend 20 odd quid on something, it's not even covering the labour, let alone the materials you put into it. So I do think, as a revolution, we should push back and we should always refer to our makes as luxury goods.

Absolutely, great advice. And now you've mentioned a couple of things that you've got coming up. Any other exciting plans either in your quilting or your work life?

I wish I could tell you. There are some fun things coming out and what I would say to especially any quilters listening, please sign up on the Festival of Quilts page for early access to tickets and information because next year is my first year planning the workshop and talks program and I really hope that you're all going to be thrilled by it. But also there are other things coming out from Festival of Quilts that I'm involved in and if you're on early access, you will hear about those first.

Speaker 2 (25:34.222)

Very exciting. So to tie up the interview, Kat, I like to play a little game of this or that. Is that all right with you? Yep. Yep. So spring, summer or autumn, winter?

I spring autumn, is that an option? I think I would go spring summer because I think spring is the greatest seasons. If I have to some attack on to that, I will.

prints or solids.

This is very cruel game. I will take solids please. meal out. I mean, it's a meal in. That's the third option. It is a meal in, but yeah, a meal out. Brights. No hesitation. Water. Yeah, basically. I only drink water. I'm very odd.

A meal out or a takeaway.

Speaker 2 (26:08.962)

Brights or neutrals?

Speaker 2 (26:13.314)

coffee.

Neither.

Speaker 2 (26:20.45)

Hand quilting or machine quilting?

Machine closing.

Design first or fabric first? One project on the go or multiple? An organised stash or creative chaos?

Fabric first.

Speaker 1 (26:31.768)

multiple.

Speaker 1 (26:35.97)

mean, it depends whether this is like a desirable situation or the actual situation. It is creative chaos. I would love to have an organised sewing room, but I have to sew in between family life. So no dedicated space yet.

think that's quite the standard response. There's an ideal and then there's reality. The last one, early morning sewing or late night sewing? Same. So where can people find you, Kat?

Late night sewing every time.

You can occasionally find me on Instagram. I am @thatkat, T-H-A-T-K-A-T. I did kind of give up posting in 2017, but I occasionally show up. I'm on TikTok as super thatkat. I'm on generally all of the social medias as thatKat. And you can always find me on the workshops desk at any of the immediate live events.

Well thank you so much for joining me on the Sewing Social podcast today it's been so great to talk to you. You take care, bye! it for today's episode of the Sewing Social podcast. Thanks so much for listening. If you're enjoying the show and want to support what we're doing you can now leave us a tip over on Ko-fi. It's like buying us a virtual coffee or a spool of thread.

Speaker 1 (27:29.942)

Thank It's been so fun. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (27:50.306)

and it helps us keep bringing you inspiring stories from the sewing community. You'll find the link in the show notes or at kofi.com forward slash the sewing social pod. Until next time, happy sewing.