Quilt Guilds

Quilt guilds are a wonderful thing!  If you are a quilter and move to a new city where you know no one, the absolute best way of meeting people with common interests is through a quilt guild.  I haven't met a quilter that I didn't like.  I moved to Texas in 1997 and didn't know a soul.  I sought out the Plano Quilt Guild and, after my very first meeting, became the program chairman.  What fun that was!  Not only did I get to know the members of the guild quickly but I entertained several nationally known quilt teachers and set up programs and classes with them for the guild.

Plano also hosts a major hot air balloon festival the last weekend in September each year.  The guild was looking for something special to commemorate the event and to see if we could raise some money at our festival booth.  I passed out paper piecing instructions for a hot air balloon block and our members came through with flying colors.  Here are some of the balloons they contributed.  What a great variety.

 



Of course, by themselves there weren't enough for a respectable wall hanging, so I got busy and put together this quilt.   The paper pieced balloons made a terrific border. 

 

 

You can see in the picture how I used to organize my stash. Outgrew that method but I'll talk about that later in a blog about my "studio" (which I still call my sewing room).  I guess I'm old fashioned.

I Survive Applique

My first foray into appliqué was a king size quilt that I saw on the cover of a quilt magazine.  I had tried hand appliqué and found that it wasn’t for me.  But I did love the look of this pattern so I decided to tackle it using the freezer paper and machine method.  I’ll never forget staying up all night in the lobby of the old Executive Inn in Paducah, waiting to be able to register for a room at the hotel for the next year’s quilt show, and glueing down the edges of 480 leaves on their freezer paper foundations.  The pieced blocks were easy but those appliqué blocks nearly drove me insane. 

The quilt pattern didn’t show a border so unartistic me had to dream up something.  At the time I thought that a border of leaves with an occasional flower bud would be great, but looking at it now, it looks to me like a string of Christmas lights.  Funny how our perspective changes over the years.

About the same time I finished the quilt, I got involved in a round robin and used the appliqué block as my center.  I was absolutely floored at what a wonderful job was done by each of the three girls who worked on a border and how beautiful the finished wall hanging is.  It hung over my bed for many years.

 

Quilting and Geometry - A Match Made in Heaven

When I was a young girl, my mother taught me how to sew.  She, herself, didn't really sew anything in my memory but, since she had a sewing machine and knew how to use it, I assume at one time she must have sewn in the past.  I started with easy, gathered skirts and simple blouses. My cousin, Gloria, learned with me about the same time and we made matching outfits...even though we lived on opposite sides of Chicago and didn't see each other very often.  Eventually I inherited my grandmother's old treadle machine and thoroughly enjoyed sewing on it but needles were hard to find and it eventually got relegated to the garage.  I'll never forget my pride in purchasing a new machine with some of the first paychecks I ever received.  Sewing was that important to me.   I sewed most of my clothing for many years, including my maternity clothes.  Unfortunately, when children came along my sewing machine saw less and less use.

As a teen, I was utterly fascinated with geometry class.  While many in the class just didn't seem to be able to grasp the idea of all those theorems, they made perfect sense to me.  I loved drawing shapes using my compass and protractor and discovering that different shapes could be drawn and put together to create new shapes and designs.  It was fun!  Hadn't a clue at that time what a quilt was or anything about it but there is no doubt in my mind that this was actually the basis of my love of quilting. 

When I actually discovered quilting, I wasn't daunted by what appeared to be complicated patterns.  I just dove into them and started sewing.  It made perfect sense to me that seams had to be accurate or how else would all those shapes fit together properly. 

 



One of my favorite early quilts was this pineapple quilt. Two of the borders hadn't been sewn on yet when this picture was taken but it's the only picture I have.  Today, if I had to duplicate it, I probably would paper piece it for accuracy but when I made it, I sewed on a strip, cut the angle, sewed on the next strip, cut the angle etc. for what seemed forever.  Today I realize how easily that could have gotten askew but everything seemed to fit together fine so I must have been extremely accurate.  I kept it for several years and then gave it to my good friend, Batty, who helped me through a tough recuperation after double knee replacement surgery.  She was delighted and I was thankful.

I Guess I Was Wrong

In my first blog, I stated that I started quilting in 1989.  While going back over some old quilt pictures, I realized that it was even earlier than that.  The very first quilt kit I bought was for a log cabin quilt, probably around 1985.  I put one block together and decided that it really was not something that I wanted to do and gave it to my mother.  She elected to put the blocks together using a quilt as you go method.  Unfortunately, when she passed away in 1987, she had only completed eight of the blocks.  I took them and made it into a wall hanging and gave it to my brother and his wife as a 'memory' quilt. The only picture I have of it is not real great but you get the idea.

 

So, apparently, I started quilting earlier than I had remembered.  After giving it some thought today, I realized that I purchased the fabric for my first quilt when we still lived in the Boston area.  Since we moved from there to Atanta in 1986, that should have given me a better timeline.  It surprises me to realize that I've been quilting now for almost 30 years and I'm still as enthralled by it as I was as a newbie.

 

I liked living in the Boston area but in six years time, although I had many acquaintances, I realized that I really didn't have any close friends.  After our move to Atlanta, I needed to make some new friends.  But where to find them?  The Internet was relatively young in those days but I was technically savvy and soon found a group of quilters in a chat room on Prodigy. It didn't take long before I had a whole slew of quilting friends spread across the U.S. including a couple in Atlanta.  For 10 years or more, we chatted every night and then started meeting in one city or another and became fast friends.  It was then that I realized that those quilters were a whole new family that I had acquired.  Spurred on by their warm welcome, I started looking around for a local quilt guild and found two that I joined.  Soon I had another quilting family and was in Seventh Heaven  (do you remember that old phrase?) and was quilting with a vengeance. 

 

 

 

Then I discovered quilt retreats!  A friend rented a condo on Hilton Head Island and invited 5 friends to come and spend a week quilting with her.  What a great idea...uninterrupted quilting with friends for 6 whole days.  She had designed the above quilt and taught us how easy it was to make.  Within two days, I had the entire top completed. The background was a pale grey and the entire quilt had a lavendar look to it- probably because of the deep purple border and lots of pinks and purples in the scraps that comprised the triangles.  I love that quilt and it has gone to a good home.

Getting Started

I've never done this before and, like most things, I have to learn a whole new set of skills in order to get this blog to look the way I want it to.  I've always been interested in all types of needlework.  At one point in my life, I even traveled all over the country and did needlework demonstrations (needlepoint, crewel, cross stitch, knitting, crocheting, etc.) in department stores when they used to have needlework departments.  It wasn't until 1989 when my cousin invited me to meet her at the big quilt show in Paducah that I really got interested in quilting and fell in love with it.  It has been my passion ever since then.

My  first quilt was rather simple.  A basic 9-patch that I actually hand quilted.  However, being new to quilting and self taught, I made the mistake of choosing polyester fabrics. I saw all the beautiful colors in the fabric store and, not knowing any better, bought them and put together this quilt.  I still love the quilt after all these years but, unfortunately, the fabrics (especially the black) have faded and lost their lustre.  It didn't take me long to realize that I needed good quilter's cottons and have been using those ever since.

 

That's about it for today.  I will continue and eventually bring you up to date with my latest projects.