I've been posting here for several days and realized I forgot to formally introduce myself. So here goes...

I've been quilting for about thirty years. I mostly hand quilt, but have been teaching myself to machine quilt, after coming to the realization that I will never finish everything I want to if I don't.

I collect vintage material and quilt tops, but I also enjoy working with bright colors.

I work full time, am married and have a 27 yr old son, and a cat.

Hi! Nice to meet you! :)

Thanks for joining us..... Quilting for 30 years .. you should be able to answer OUR questions!


WELCOME!

Hello and welcome. Glad to have you aboard. :D :D

Welcome! Looking forward to some of your experience!

M

So glad you joined up! We hope you have some quilt photos to show us!

Hi! Nice to meet you.

Thank you all for your welcoming comments!

Welcome to the group... you will fit right in with us here. :)

Welcome aboard LisaE, I'm a Lisa also and I have a daughter less than a month from turning 27! I hope you enjoy visiting and posting on this site. We would love to see some of your quilts!

Glad you decided to join in. It's always nice to share your quilts with other quilters. Everyone here is very supportive. There are always lots of good ideas & links provided by people who have shared their finds. Welcome & enjoy! :D

Hi lisae from lisam :D I'm so glad you're here!

Welcome aboard....I promise you that you will love being here....Even the cat will be happy...(they like quilts).. :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

Nice to "meet" you. Hope you will post some pictures of your work. Glad you joined us!

AAAAh....Santa Cruz...fond childhood memories there! :D

Rah! Rah! Banana Slugs!

Yes. One of the 'joys' of the cooler months is seeing a banana slug crawling across my back porch. In all, seriousness we really like living here.

Hi Lisae and welcome. We've bumped into each other in a few of the threads. How is the machine quilting coming? I love to hand quilt but I have a few quilts that are about 14+ years old that are still waiting to be hand quilted. They are resting on a rather large pile of tops that are finished but not quilted. :oops: I finally decided I needed to learn to machine quilt just because it is so much faster. I figure soon hand quilting will be so rare I will be able to make a living hand quilting other people's quilts. :lol:
~Tiffany

Hello and glad you finally joined us. Can't wait to see your works.

I know what you mean about hand quilting becoming rare; when I go to quilt shows only a small percentage of the quilts are hand quilted.

My machine quilting is coming along slowly. I've quilted about five baby quilts and a lap quilt for myself. In the ditch or cross hatching is easy enough, but free hand quilting is hard for me. I'd like to be able to stipple(or meander) stitch well, but it always turns into spirals. They look okay but, I want to be able to do what I set out to do.

I just finished the tops for two more baby quilts and will start machine quilting them next weekend. I got backing and batting yesterday.

I sat down and marked a 14 inch square of muslin in the stipple pattern, sandwiched it together, and used that to practice with when I was teaching myself to stipple quilt. I then practiced on a few practice blocks before trying it out on a real quilt. I'll admit I did occassionally still cross over myself but it wasn't very often. Starting with those practice pieces, especially the first one where I drew it out until I was used to the motion of stippling, it really did help. If you have any extra muslin lying around, give it a try and see if that helps keep things from turning into spirals. :thumbup:

You know, I have to admit I have done a few pieces using the stipple technique and I have to say I don't like it. I feel it makes the quilt too stiff, especially if the stipple is too closely quilted together. It works great for pieces that are going to be hanging on the wall but for baby quilts I will never use the technique again and wish I hadn't used it on my grandson's quilt. With all the baby quilts you do, if you are like me and feel baby quilts are supposed to be cuddly, you may not like the stipple technique for them either. Just thought I'd give you a heads up. :wink:
~Tiffany

Oh, I've made practice pieces. I just think spirals feel natural to me so I have to work to overcome that or decide I will use spirals. :)

I usually use flannel for the back of baby quilts. I confine the denser quilting to the boarder, so they feel pretty cuddly.

Now I think that would have made all the difference in the world, if I had used flannel on the back!
~Tiffany

:)

Hello
My name is Cheryl. I have been quilting since late 1988 and 1989. I learned to cut and mark each seam by hand and cut out with scissors. Now thank goodness we have the rotary cutter and mat. These things make it so much easier to cut and it's quicker too.
I belong to a quilt club in West Virginia, in the panhandle. Our name is Panhandle Piecemakers. We have been a club since 1984. We have about 20 members and we meet once a month.
We also sponsor an annual quilt show at the John D Rockefeller Career Center in New Cumberland, WV. The show this year is June 13, 14. If anyone reading this is interested, please come and visit us, we'd love to have you.
Thank you for letting me say hello. I hope to hear from some of you soon.
P.S. I'm also looking for low fat and low sugar recipes. I'm diabetic and need these kinds of recipes to eat. Thanks again

Welcome to the board!

I learned to quilt the same way you did; I even taught a quilting class using those techniques. Now, I love rotary cutters!!

Hi Cheryl and welcome! I remember well my first few quilts, which were cut out with scissors. One was a 'Trip Around the World' and when I think of all those squares I cut out, each with a square template cut from cardboard that got smaller and smaller after several hundred uses. :roll: I'm with you, thank God for the rotary cutter and mat! Especially now that I'm older and have all sorts of wrist problems.

You'll want to check out the Recipe part of this Forum. You'll find all sorts of helpful recipes over there and you can always post asking for everyone's favorite sugar-free recipes. I'll keep my eye out for any recipes I use that are safe for diabetics. I've got Celiac Disease and am allergic to the entire Benzene series, plus I'm not supposed to have dairy or sugar ('supposed' being the operative word) so I feel your pain when it comes to finding good recipes. Good luck and again, welcome!
~Tiffany

Hi Tiffany
Thank you for answering so fast.
I love making quilts now. Have you heard of the technique stack 'n whack?
I've learned to do 4 patch stack and whack, but I just can't get the diamond shape ones. I sew like they tell you to, and still I can't seem to make the seams come together right.
You're right about the cardboard, it did seem to get smaller.
I'll check the recipes for here and see what I come up with.


<> Cheryl

Not only did they seem to get smaller; those templates actually did get smaller.

I love the Stack-n-Whack technique but have never made one. My g/f bought me the fabric to make one and gifted it to me for Christmas (that would be 2 Christmas' ago now) and we've finally decided that next month we are starting on it in our little group. I'm going to start with the Stack-n-Whack and then do a Four Patch Posey, which is similiar but with only 4 repeats.

Darn old fashioned cardboard templates. The UFO I'm fininshing (due at the guild meeting next week) was made with those. After 15 years I still had a ton of cut out units and I used them to make the border. Some of the unit pieces were an actual quarter inch smaller than others. :shock: I am so glad we have graduated to better tools than what our grandmothers and great grandmothers used!