Fast Forward

It's been about 5 years and well, many things have changed. I've been married, done a bit of sewing here and there and now I live in Idaho. I am teaching, have a tiny apartment and a summer off. I need to downsize and I go to a church with lots and lots of new babies. One a month for two years in fact but we will come to that in another post. I have done a quilt class about rotary cutting and now I have what I need for good quilt making. A rotary cutter, a good mat and a good ruler, all of which I still have because if you take good care of your tools they will last a lifetime. The preschool where I worked had done a baby quilt as a workshop to learn about sharing, we all made one part and then had to share our parts. The director was a quilter. I had a lot of fun. Thing is, I had never finished the quilt and so it was with all my stash in a flip top tote. I decided to finish that quilt for a friend in the church. It went over so well that soon word got out and that's how it all began.

Lesson #1 The direction you start may not be the direction you finish
Lesson #2 Beware who you give a quilt to, it may turn out to be well loved
Lesson #3 Take a class, it will help more than anything else you can do to learn how to use your tools and make accurate blocks. Those 2 things will be he most important things you can do for successful quilt making.

The Passing of Time

Just when the quilting bug bit, my life changed dramatically and I became a single mom with two small children. A preschooler and an infant. I lost my super awesome job to downsizing and had to find whatever. This meant that I couldn't buy much fabric so when I could I went crazy. I think I bought more ugly fabric just because it was a price I could afford than I really should have. The good news is, it's all used up. I learned something really important in those days. I can be frugal and still make something beautiful. I learned that a 3 year old can completely dismantle a sewing machine in the time it takes to have a shower and I learned that just because I didn't get to sew all the time or make quilts I didn't have to give up my love for quilting. I spent a lot of time going to quilt shows and reading books so when I was ready to sew again I had a lot of good ideas and a lot of information.

Lesson #1 Even uglies can be used up
Lesson #2 It's not a good buy even if it's on sale if you won't use it
Lesson #3 Don't take your stash for granted

My second quilt

My second quilt was made years after my first official quilt. I got this crazy idea about making a signature quilt for my sister, on point. Of couse, no pattern. I obviously didn't learn much from the first go around. This time, I'd been to art school in Sheridan Wyoming. Just so you know, they were not as open to my creative side as I would have hoped and I transfered after the first semester. My design teacher gave me a really solid foundation on color and balance. I did a great pointillism project that still hangs on my parents kitchen wall. I love it every time I see it. I was nominated Homecoming Princess for the first time in my whole life and got to go on an amazing road trip to the art museum in Denver Colorado but all of this was overshadowed by the crazy oil teacher who thought I would never do anything with art and relentlessly told me so. Well, she may have been right if I hadn't grown from my second quilt. I used plain colors, lavender, pink, minty green and baby blue squares. It was a pretty plain looking quilt and I don't know that my sister even still has it.

Lesson #1 Don't believe what everyone tells you, keep doing something you love.
Lesson #2 Never make your own homecoming dress because you can't find one that doesn't look like Scarlett O'Hara wore it because that is actually what all the other girls were wearing.
Lesson #3 Sometimes the baby never gets the chance to love the quilt.

My First Quilt

Well my first quilt was maybe not even a quilt. I know I used to sew things together when I was very young so maybe this shouldn't be titled my first quilt but this is when I knew that I loved quilting. I was 17, my then boyfriend's sister announced she was going to have a baby and I thought, great I'll make her a quilt. We went shopping first. Big mistake but I had a lot of fabric and he didn't mind. so I laid out a picture of a bear that I had drawn, cut the pieces out of my other fabrics and just sewed them on. We layered it together with the most nasty big fluffy poly batting, sewed around the edge, turned it inside out and then tied it. I don't have a picture but I'm sure it was a mess, years later it was loved to only a thread so no one will ever know about all the mistakes.

Lesson #1 plan before you shop.
Lesson #2 if you want to make your first quilt, it's probably better to use a pattern and then follow the directions.
Lesson #3 the baby doesn't care and will love it anyway.

Welcome

So I am always asked why I don't blog, if I have a blog, or have been told that if I did have a blog that it would be interesting. Well, I didn't have a blog, but I do now. I can't be sure that it will always be interesting but I hope it will. My goal is to share from the beginning until now how my quilts have progressed, what I have learned, or share a few stories about teaching, designing, successes and failures because after all sometimes the negative really is a positive. My goal is that the information you find here will help you step out of your box and meet your own new goals.