Aarti Ravi bought a sewing machine when she moved to Europe in her 20s because having one felt as natural as owning any other household appliance. “I think the whole thing started because I had these IKEA curtains…these heavy, velvet curtains,” she said. It was such good fabric that, when Aarti no longer needed the curtains, she decided to repurpose them.
But the machine, which she dragged between homes in Belgium, England, and Switzerland, turned out to be a dud. It never worked right, leaving her with multiple birds’ nests of thread that her father, Ramaswami Ravi, tried to fix. “My dad was always Mr. Fix It. He would take the whole thing apart, and the two of us would be looking at it,” she said. “We’d get it working for about 10 minutes, thinking that we fixed it, and it would just knot up again. It was like a whole family endeavor to get that thing to work.”
Though frustrated, Aarti was, thankfully, not deterred from sewing. Growing up in Columbus, Ohio, she had hung around as her mom, Sulochana Ravi, made clothing for her on weekends. “What I remember is all those fun trips to JOANN, picking out fabric,” she said.
Aarti moved back to the United States in 2018 and settled in Washington, D.C., where she works in finance for a nonprofit. She ditched the clunky machine—she gave it away before leaving Switzerland—and bought another. That new machine worked as it was supposed to—and just in time. Friends started having babies, which offered Aarti, who by that point had sewn a few garments and bags, the perfect entry point into quilting. “There were 12 babies within the span of a couple years, and so, they all got quilts,” she said.
Early on, Aarti turned to the internet and social media as she learned, finding inspiration for patterns and gathering new techniques via Instagram and YouTube from accounts like Vacilando Studios, Suzy Quilts (run by Michigan-based Suzy Williams), and Missouri-based Angela Walters, who runs Quilting Is My Therapy and posts tutorials under the moniker Midnight Quilter. “My first baby quilts were just ideas I had in my head,” she said. “I was watching YouTube videos and saying, ‘Oh, I could do that.’”
Before long, Aarti started adapting patterns to suit her own tastes. She also joined the DC Modern Quilt Guild, which helped propel her farther by adding structure and also building her confidence to try new things, including her first art quilt, Reclaiming My Time (2021). The quilt, made for the guild’s 2021 show titled Modern Patriotic, shows a woman’s face echoed multiple times over lines depicting dialogue and symbolizes the importance of amplifying diverse voices for the country’s future. Inspired by the work of the late Faith Ringgold, an artist whose medium ranged from painting to sculpture and quilts, Reclaiming My Time was Aarti’s first attempt at raw-edge appliqué. “I don’t even think I looked up how to do it. I just guessed,” she said. “You’ll see some hand work there. I was like, ‘Oh, I’ll just add some stitches.’”
She also designed a row quilt, sewn with help from multiple guild members as part of a project honoring social justice workers called Wrapped in Love for Justice. The quilt was made for labor organizer, feminist, and civil rights leader Dolores Huerta, cofounder of the National Farm Workers Association, now United Farm Workers.
“They trusted me to design this quilt that would honor all of the work that she’s done,” Aarti said. The quilt, which incorporates symbols representing Dolores’ work, was sent to the activist in California, who sent a thank you back. In her studio, Aarti also keeps a framed, hand-drawn photo of the quilt, made by an artist who saw a picture of it posted on Instagram. “What I love is that it just inspired somebody to turn it into another medium and sort of memorialize it,” she said.
Aarti, who is also a woodworker, favors quilting with solids, preferring “color to be the main focus,” she said. Inspiration might come from anywhere: a cute vintage shop, for example, or for one quilt, a display she spotted at a West Elm home décor location in New York City. A numbers person by day, she designs her quilts in Microsoft Excel and keeps a journal of the more than 70 she has completed so far. Aarti finds joy in giving away most of her quilts, either to loved ones or to charity through her guild, though a smattering of her wall hangings brighten her condo in D.C.’s Mount Pleasant neighborhood.
Her quilts for friends and family—including friends’ babies, some of whom she has not yet met—now reside in places as far away as Australia and India, and as close as her native Ohio, D.C., and North Carolina. Quilting provides Aarti a tangible connection to friends and loved ones. “It’s a way for them to see what I’m doing, and it’s a way for me to be closer to them,” she said.
Becky Leach-Seymour, a friend of Aarti’s since high school, wrapped herself in one of Aarti’s quilts—a brightly colored take on Broadcloth Studio’s Mod Boxwood pattern—as she recovered from a preventative double mastectomy a few years ago. Becky’s daughter, Emilia, still uses the baby quilt, which Aarti adapted from a Midnight Quilter pattern, that she received as a baby in 2019. The friends send each other small gifts—Becky, who lives in Columbus, crochets and also knits—as a way to stay present in each other’s lives, though they are separated by hundreds of miles. Having a quilt from Aarti to use during her recovery “felt very special because we’ve known each other so long,” Becky said.
To come full circle, one of Aarti’s favorite quilts is a Courthouse Steps-style that she constructed out of scraps from quilts she’s made for others. “Every time I see it, I’m like, ‘Oh, this is in Gina’s quilt. This is in Becky’s quilt. And this one is from the one that went to Australia,’” she said.
But Aarti has another quilt she treasures more. While the activity of quilting acts as a distraction from the day-to-day and gives her a way to keep busy and moving around her condo, it “also can bring a lot of emotion,” she said. During the spring of 2026, she finished a quilt in honor of her dad, who passed away in 2023. Every time she sees it, “it’s like a big hug from him.”
Made from scraps of her dad’s clothing, the Four Patch quilt is a mix of plaids, stripes, and other prints, surrounded by a gold border over a cream background. Aarti agonized over the design, switching the top pattern part of the way through, and still feeling that the quilt was too dull.
She kept going, though, and changed her mind with the quilt now complete. She plans to keep this one forever, a constant reminder of her loving, jokester father. “It’s just the best thing I’ve ever done,” she said.
Courtney Mabeus-Brown has been a journalist for more than two decades and a quilter for about two years. She bought her first sewing machine during the COVID-19 pandemic, making bags and small home accessories before a friend got her hooked on quilting; she’s now made three quilts, and there is no end in sight. Courtney lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and cat in an old 1880s home. Her award-winning journalism has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Virginian-Pilot, and many others, and her sewing work can be found on Instagram at @SundrySouthKing.
