Well yes a nightmare until I learned how to do it right.
This is my story of how I became a quilter…
I became interested in quilting about 12 years ago when I was in college (studying of all things business – marketing) and a friend of mine was finishing up a quilt that she made with her mother. It actually sparked a high interest in me like never before.
You see I’ve been interested in sewing for many years as two of my closest aunts were dressmakers. I would sit by them endlessly and was always at aw how they could create such beautiful things from just a piece of material, sewing machine, thread and scissors. Years in fact I spent sitting and watching them wondering if I could ever do it myself.
However whenever I would ask them to show me how, they would always tell me…”Don’t learn this craft, it is brutal, hard work and it will never give you good money”
So as a young mind with little self-esteem I believed them and never pursued sewing. Until that day however, when I saw my friend make this quilt, that the spark in me grew again. So with great enthusiasm and couple hundred dollars that I had saved over summer from my job, I went to the store and bought a domestic sewing machine.
Then a couple days later I went into a fabric store bought a quilt pattern (probably a little harder for my skill of zero) and fabric that the design specified. I also bought cutting board, ruler and of course a rotary cutter. Excited I went home read briefly the instructions and began cutting all my pieces for the design as it specified.
I cut and sewed for straight two weeks in between studying and of course keeping my relationship with then my boyfriend now husband.
It was awesome, the pieces came together so quickly, the design was coming together, it almost looked like the piece on the front of the pattern. I was so proud of myself. Finally, I did something all by myself. I pieced it all together and basted it and began hand quilting….
However to this day, it is still not finished…..yup… I did pick it up here and there and tried quilting it but but it just was not exciting and I kept on putting it back in my project to do in future job…
Well maybe…
Little did I know, that I was doing it all wrong….
I just didn’t understand what I was doing. I was totally uneducated about quilting and the whole process…
Well, that was the truth, until May of 2009 when I found a little shop in Streetsville, Ontario, Ruti’s Needlebed where I took beginners classes (Sampler quilt 9 squares), and began learning how to quilt properly. There I was taught, by a great teacher Ruth Snell, how to quilt properly.
First day she looked at my supplies and quickly pointed out that my rotary cutter is way old and there are definitely better ones out there now, my ruler was dated as well and so I listened as any good student would do, and revamped my basic supplies and began my journey as a quilter for the second time.
Buying those supplies greatly improved my skills and the cutting was so easy and effortless.
I will talk more about my learning process on later posts so please keep popping in.
Back to my old paper pieced quilt. Well on my second or third class (after just taking a paper piecing class which I loved and learned a great deal on how to paper piece properly) I finally got the courage to bring my old quilt into the shop and ask what to do with it. I was so excited and scared at the same time, but I finally did it.
The answer both shocked and surprised me. (I thought they would say great effort just finish quilting it and it will be fine but…) Ruth and her employees quickly pointed out that I really needed to take it apart and add another square as this was totally bland and unexciting.
So as a good student and holding my ego back, I did it. After all, they were the ones with the experience, not me, that is why I trusted them. Within the next 24 hours I had taken it all apart and brought it back to show them on my next lesson.
As we looked through them I learned that one, all my squares were, well, not square, or equal. (This is the front of my Block)
Now I know why I had such a tough time with putting them together.
My seems, well that was a disaster, not one of them was 1/4 inch, in fact the back of the square looked like a rag doll. (As you can seen in the picture below)
Stitching was falling apart left and right, as my stitch length was, one too big, and two the thread I used was way too thick.
The offset squares were just a piece of fabric that totally made the quilt bland and unexciting, and well to finish, my piecing skills were extremely bad and most of my triangles and seems never met or formed a uniformed line.
Needless to say I did learn a lot from just reviewing my quilt and by taking it apart.
When I went home I went and cleaned up my seems and even took apart every square to it’s 8 triangles (remember I did not have the paper backing on it anymore, so this was a bit crazy, but I wanted to really make it right.) I then cleaned up the seems as much as I could, and cut them to a 1/4 inch. I squared off the sides of the triangles so that they would match up easily. I ironed them all and put them together as I learned in my class.
Voila the seems matched and the squares began to look like something. They still were smaller than the 12 and a 1/2 inch (more like 12 and 1/8 inch) but now they looked totally proper.
I brought them in for the second time when I was ready to add an additional square design to the quilt. I was very proud of my effort and it was quickly recognized by the employees of the store.
Effortlessly, then I was able to find an additional square with a piece of software available at the store computer. I picked my fabric, and took my last lesson for the beginners course in my sampler quilt where we evaluated the square and used 1/2 square triangles to complete the intricate design. (Thangles are a great thing for that, you can buy them in your local fabric or quilting store)
My biggest lesson however is that you have to have the skill to do something right the first time. Learning quilting from someone who has done it many times before is the best way to learn, not to say that learning from a book is bad, but the live feedback that you get from a teacher is far greater than sitting at home and figuring it all out on your own.
Wow this is long, sorry got a little excited about writing this….
I would really love to hear your story so please post a comment below of your first beginnings in quilting and what you would do different if you had to go about it again for the first time….
Thank you,
Talk to you soon!!!
Eva
