Quilt patterns for men, applique, pieced quilts, children & Punch Needle patterns

Deb Stahl
43274 267th Street
Bridgewater, SD 57319
(605) 729-2220
deb@debbiedeardesigns.net

Although she has been sewing nearly her entire life, Deb Stahl began quilting less than 10 years ago when her youngest child ‘left the nest’. She needed a way to fill her spare time, so she signed up for her first quilting class in the winter of 1999. She learned the basics of fabric selection, cutting, piecing, and binding, returning home with a simple wall hanging. In the spring of the same year, her son announced his engagement and Deb decided the perfect wedding gift would be a quilt. That summer she began the task of piecing together a queen-sized quilt. The hand-quilted heirloom was her first major project. She finished it in 3 months.

The rest, as they say, is history. Deb was hooked. The spare bedroom in the house quickly filled up with hundreds of fat quarters in every color imaginable (her family thinks she likes shopping for fat quarters more than she likes sewing with them) and the humming sound of the sewing machine is always expected.

Deb’s plan was never to design patterns. In fact, she claims that she was perfectly happy to follow other people’s directions (her family laughs at this since they say she is usually the one giving out the directions). However, when she couldn’t find a pattern for a ‘paper doll’ quilt that she wanted to make, she decided to put all those skills learned as a 4-H leader to work and she set out to design her own pattern. Paper Doll Memories, pattern #454, was Deb’s first design. Deb now has over 40 patterns.

Deb lives on a farm near Bridgewater, SD, with her husband, Melvin. They have been married for nearly 33 years and have raised three grown children: Jamie, Kevin and Stephanie. Their daughters, Jamie and Stephanie, live in Omaha, Nebraska. Their son, Kevin, lives on a farm near Bridgewater with his wife, Tara, and their 4-year old son, Jackson, and a newborn, Candice.

When not quilting, most of Deb’s time is occupied spoiling her ‘sweety-pie’ grandchildren or driving down to Omaha to visit her daughters. She claims the only reason that she can let her daughters live so far away is that there are a lot of good quilt shops between Bridgewater and Omaha.

Debbie Dear Designs is now a family business. Jamie, Stephanie and Tara assist in pattern design, creation, and order processing. Ideas and input, whether solicited or not (ha!), come from everyone – even Melvin and Kevin!

We hope you’ve learned a little more about the designer. Enjoy looking through our website!