Faces of Southeast Missouri: Karla Kiefner

Karla Kiefner is a quilter and designer. Her quilt was recently featured on the cover of the magazine Quiltmaker.

Photo by Aaron Eisenhauer

Before Karla Kiefner saw the advance digital copy of the Quiltmaker March/April May/June 2024 double issue her quilt is featured in, she didn’t know what to expect.

When she opened the file, she felt shocked.

“[My quilt] was on the cover. And I'm sitting there looking at it going, ‘Wait a minute,’” Kiefner says. “It really took a while for me to go,‘I think I know that [quilt].’”

Kiefner made the featured quilt called “Reflections of Love” using both sides of the bold fabric by fabric designer Anna Maria Horner’s from her Love Always fabric line. Kiefner designed the quilt to be comprised of “X” and “O” blocks as an homage to Horner, who, although she has never met her, Kiefner views as a fabric designing mentor.

Kiefner came across the call for patterns using big, bold motifs from Golden Peak Media, the magazine company that produces Quiltmaker, in 2023 and submitted her design. Once accepted, the company asked her to remake the quilt in fabric that would be new and available when the magazine came out, so she remade the quilt in approximately a week and shipped it to them to be photographed.

This is the second quilt Kiefner has designed that has been featured in a magazine; in 2019, AQ Magazine featured a watering can pattern she designed. Her designs have also been featured in Connecting Threads and Nancy’s Notions catalogs.

Kiefner first began quilting when she took a class on the subject in 2004, using tools her mother-in-law lent her. In 2017, Kiefner went to a quilt market in St. Louis, where she overheard a designer showing a shop owner a quilt she’d made the night before, and the owner asked for a pattern; the designer said she’d write it in her room that night and give it to her tomorrow. At that moment, something clicked for Kiefner: She realized she could write patterns, too. She decided to start.

Around that time, Kiefner innovated her signature quilt design: using both sides of the fabric. While working on a bee quilt, she had picked out the focus fabric for the bee figure and knew the binding for the quilt would be made out of the same material. However, she wanted a third element but didn’t like the way her choices were turning out. Frustrated, she tossed the fabric down, and it flipped over. That was when she realized she could use the reverse of the fabric to play on value and create something interesting.

Kiefner is the only quilt artist she knows who designs quilts intentionally using both sides of the fabric. This helps create interest within her quilts.

“Anytime you have a pieced quilt or something, if [all of the material is] at the same value, then they’re all shouting, and then it’s hard to look at. But when you have differences in value, I say it adds sparkle to it,” Kiefner says.

Kiefner has written more than 50 quilt patterns that use both sides of the fabric, which she sells online through her business Creative Bee Studios. In addition to quilting, Kiefner designs fabric using Adobe Illustrator that she sells on the website Spoonflower. She also films YouTube videos and writes a blog about her quilts. And she sells her other artwork that she puts on gift items like mugs, T shirts and beach accessories on Etsy. Locally, she is a member of the River Heritage Quilt Guild.

For those interested in learning to quilt, Kiefner recommends joining a quilt guild or taking classes.

“There’s a lot of people who are just really happy to teach you how [to quilt],” Kiefner says. “You can do it on your own, you know with YouTube, but it’s so much more fun to quilt with friends and learn things from friends.”