I had taken a hiatus from quilting for about a year and a half, so I thought that I'd watch a couple of quilt shows to get me back into the spirit and brush up on my skills. Now, I'll admit, before I get started here, I have learned a ton of stuff from quilting shows. I literally learned everything about quilting either from shows, or online, or here, at the QB. Mostly here at the QB.
All that being said, I had to question the validity of some of these shows. I mean really, are you that perfect of a quilter? Do I really need all of those expensive things that you use on your show? I watched one show this morning where she was sandwiching a quilt and another one where she was putting together a nine-patch; both are every day tasks to a quilter. In her TV quilting world, there were no loose threads, no 2 1/2" squares with any fraying what so ever, ( Are you that good of a cutter that you cut exactly with the grain?) every piece was pressed perfectly with her very, very expensive iron, (which looks like it weighs a ton,) everything was cut with extreme precision with her most expensive rotary cutter. At one point, she apologized for being so cramped and that she she usually did all of this type of work on a huge ping-pong table set up in her quilting room at home. Geesh...that must be a big sewing room! When she sat down to sew, she did everything on her super expensive sewing machine, (I'm guessing $4k to $5k, at least.) Of course, it was sewn with perfection, first time, after she tapped a couple of buttons and let the machine do all of the work.
After awhile, I started feeling a bit insecure about my skills, my sewing space and my simple, old Singer. Do I really, really need a room to house a ping-pong table? I can't even afford a ping-pong table, much less an addition to my house. And what about all those strings that I try to wipe off of my sweats after every quilting session? She doesn't have those. Am I too sloppy? Is my thrift store iron an embarrassment? Gosh, I'd better not let anyone see it. Will my seams ever look that good, my blocks that square? I'd better start buying a higher quality fabric. Hers looks amazing!
And then...she proceeded to tell us all about how easy free-motion quilting was.
She set a very, small quilt sandwich on her fancy machine, put on an unusual quilting foot which looked like it came from Tiffany's and proceeded to do some stippling. Guess what...yup, it looked awful...and it was done in contrasting thread so it really, really looked awful...just like mine does!
Look, I'm not knocking people who invest in these nice sewing machines, or people who have big sewing rooms, or commendable sewing skills. If that's you, you go girl/guy! I'm just saying that these TV shows can be so misleading and we all have to remember that they are paid to promote these products, that they have a staff to get all of these blocks and HSTs ready beforehand and that there are out-takes. Still, once in awhile, they do give you a good tip that you can add to your repertoire of quilting skills. Lastly, you are probably a better quilter than they would like you to believe.
OK...I'm getting off of my soapbox now.
~ C