How Did You Get Started?
01-24-2009, 01:29 PM
#31
Super Member
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Douglas County, GA
Posts: 1,722
I satisfy my creativity urge by sewing. When the company I worked for sold in 1994, I lost my job and was not interested in getting another one. I therefore did not need to keep making clothing, although I continued to do doll making for several more years. However, I'm a bit of a fabric junkie so I started watching and taping the quilting programs on t.v. and was really fascinated by the quilts, the fabric, the notions, and the whole process. I decided to try it and I've been loving it ever since. It just gets better and better.
01-24-2009, 01:37 PM
#32
Junior Member
Join Date: Jul 2008
Posts: 177
Mostly self-taught--I've never taken classes.
Grandma quilted until a few years ago, and I was given several of them over the years. Mom doesn't quilt. It seemed like losing a part of culture and history to not start doing it. I made my first one a year or two ago...and still haven't made many.
Grandma quilted until a few years ago, and I was given several of them over the years. Mom doesn't quilt. It seemed like losing a part of culture and history to not start doing it. I made my first one a year or two ago...and still haven't made many.
01-24-2009, 02:13 PM
#33
Member
Join Date: May 2007
Location: Manteno, IL
Posts: 87
I learned to sew in a home ec class in high school. I did a lot of sewing, knitting, cross stitching, etc. over the years. Awhile back my mother gave me a quilt top that my great-grandmother had hand pieced back in the day. The fabric was starting to rot, and I knew I had to preserve it, so I took a quilting class at a local high school and hand quilted the top. I have been quilting on and off since them. I am now quilting almost every day, and enter our County Fair every year. It is so relaxing and fills my days.....
01-24-2009, 02:30 PM
#34
Member
Join Date: Dec 2008
Location: Grand Rapids, MI
Posts: 45
I wandered into our LQS to check out Pfaff embroidery machines. I have been sewing since elementary school. I bought the machine of my dreams for embroidery but was very curious about all of the quilts hanging in the shop. They looked like a puzzle that I HAD to learn to solve. I started doing the BOM there and have been hooked ever since. I wish I could say that I combine the embroidery with quilting but I rarely do - hope to eventually. Kathy
01-24-2009, 05:20 PM
#35
Super Member
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: North Carolina
Posts: 3,579
Originally Posted by mpeters1200
I never saw a quilt before in my life until I met my husband. I couldn't imagine why anyone would want to make a blanket when you can just buy a comforter in the store that's probably warmer anyway.
My mother was a home ec goddess. She was one of the first women (and first non caucasian) that graduated from a fashion school in NY. She crocheted, knitted, sewed you name it. She would go with my aunts (her inlaws) to craft fairs. She never bought anything, and wouldn't let anyone else buy anything either. She would just go home and make it....from looking at it once. When I was growing up in the early 1980's, she would get catalogs in the mail and then make whatever was in them without the pattern.
She never taught me...any of her gifts. She had gone to college in the 60's and I came along a little later than she had planned. She felt the women's movement had come along enough that she didn't have to teach me anything. She really thought that knowing how to make beautiful things was keeping me into the "mold" that so many women have to do. She didn't teach me how to cook or anything that could be considered feminine work. I still have no clue how to sew. I'd love to learn someday.
When I married, my MIL had little patience for me. She couldn't understand why I didn't know how to do ANYTHING. She let me help her make a quilt for my nieces a year or so after we married. It was very complicated and she went really fast. I think she meant to teach me a lesson, but I got a hunger for making quilts that has had me ever since. She helped me pick out a beginner machine a year or so later when I drove her crazy constantly asking about different machines. I signed up for a beginner class at Hancock's. I think that I learned to cut backwards, so that's a hard thing for me to do, but I still have the quilt bug.
My first 4 quilts were all the same pattern. Lap size rail fences. My husband's family raved about them and I've been making stuff since. 90% of what I have made, I have made in a group for charity. I've made 6 total lap size now and one queen....but countless full and twin size for charity.
My MIL ended up becoming my best friend and a good mother substitute for me. When she passed away in 2007, I was blind with grief. I got quilter's block so bad. It was people here that helped me out of it. I kept some small squares of fabric she had helped me pick out for a friend with cancer. I kept the left over squares, sewed them, and framed them. They now hang in my sewing room....with a picture of my MIL and I presenting a quilt to a charity. I will always have reminders...but I thank God everyday that she showed me my new passion. It really brought us together.
Once both of my mothers were gone, I started accumulating clothing from both of them. I don't have enough of one mom or the other to make a quilt, so I will make one that honors both of them at once.
My latest quilt, a lap size for my grandmother, has incorporated many patterns and nuances that my dear MIL taught me. I know that I will carry her gift with me everywhere.
Melissa
My mother was a home ec goddess. She was one of the first women (and first non caucasian) that graduated from a fashion school in NY. She crocheted, knitted, sewed you name it. She would go with my aunts (her inlaws) to craft fairs. She never bought anything, and wouldn't let anyone else buy anything either. She would just go home and make it....from looking at it once. When I was growing up in the early 1980's, she would get catalogs in the mail and then make whatever was in them without the pattern.
She never taught me...any of her gifts. She had gone to college in the 60's and I came along a little later than she had planned. She felt the women's movement had come along enough that she didn't have to teach me anything. She really thought that knowing how to make beautiful things was keeping me into the "mold" that so many women have to do. She didn't teach me how to cook or anything that could be considered feminine work. I still have no clue how to sew. I'd love to learn someday.
When I married, my MIL had little patience for me. She couldn't understand why I didn't know how to do ANYTHING. She let me help her make a quilt for my nieces a year or so after we married. It was very complicated and she went really fast. I think she meant to teach me a lesson, but I got a hunger for making quilts that has had me ever since. She helped me pick out a beginner machine a year or so later when I drove her crazy constantly asking about different machines. I signed up for a beginner class at Hancock's. I think that I learned to cut backwards, so that's a hard thing for me to do, but I still have the quilt bug.
My first 4 quilts were all the same pattern. Lap size rail fences. My husband's family raved about them and I've been making stuff since. 90% of what I have made, I have made in a group for charity. I've made 6 total lap size now and one queen....but countless full and twin size for charity.
My MIL ended up becoming my best friend and a good mother substitute for me. When she passed away in 2007, I was blind with grief. I got quilter's block so bad. It was people here that helped me out of it. I kept some small squares of fabric she had helped me pick out for a friend with cancer. I kept the left over squares, sewed them, and framed them. They now hang in my sewing room....with a picture of my MIL and I presenting a quilt to a charity. I will always have reminders...but I thank God everyday that she showed me my new passion. It really brought us together.
Once both of my mothers were gone, I started accumulating clothing from both of them. I don't have enough of one mom or the other to make a quilt, so I will make one that honors both of them at once.
My latest quilt, a lap size for my grandmother, has incorporated many patterns and nuances that my dear MIL taught me. I know that I will carry her gift with me everywhere.
Melissa
01-24-2009, 06:47 PM
#36
Power Poster
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Florida
Posts: 17,636
love these stories...ok, here comes mine. My mother always sewed but didn't have the patience to teach me. Her mother, my little gma, sewed, but lived a bit away, but visited about every 6 months. When I was about ten my gma was visiting and helped me make a simple cotton top. I was hooked on sewing and used most of my babysitting money on fabrics. My mother soon learned that if she let me use her machine I would make my clothes and she didn't have to buy them.
When my kids were little I guessed how to make two simple baby quilts and then somewhere down the road made a full queen size quilt in huge pastel squares and white eyelet embroidery fabric. I had been given a huge amount of this tan ? fabric...wasn't just cotton, but it worked ok for a backing. Since I had never seen anyone quilt or seen a magazine or anything, I must have sewn the backing to a used blanket in a huge asterik and then tied the quilt top to both. My kids loved it and one time took to a church sleep in and got many compliments.
Since I loved to make clothes, toys, etc. that satisfied any curiosity I had about quilts for a long time. All I had ever seen was patchwork quilts that didn't have any particular design or anything to them and they just didn't interest me enough to want to make one.
Then a few years ago, my father's mother started telling me about teaching at a senior citizen's group and they were making a fall wall hanging and all the ladies were handmaking a quilt to raffle off.
She is immensely talented, but lives across the country from me. I did get curious though and picked up a quilting magazine and found out that the world of quilt is an amazing place of colors, textures, designs, and once i realized that since you use small pieces to make the blocks, that meant you had to buy a lot of different colors of fabric. Well I had always loved fabric, but you bought one kind for one outfit...oh, this was going to be FUN!!! I thought I was going to get one book and read it and turn out quilts like the lucy episode where she was working in a factory and the candy just kept a coming!!!!
So, i went crazy buying everything in site and got seriously out of control until I got very sick and couldn't sew for over a year. Now hubby is disabled and we have to be careful, but I would say I owe the itch to my family, but my grandma n. pushed me to scratch it. I still sew other things sometimes, but my love, my passion is all about quilting now. It's like finding your way home and you didn't even know you were lost. :wink:
When my kids were little I guessed how to make two simple baby quilts and then somewhere down the road made a full queen size quilt in huge pastel squares and white eyelet embroidery fabric. I had been given a huge amount of this tan ? fabric...wasn't just cotton, but it worked ok for a backing. Since I had never seen anyone quilt or seen a magazine or anything, I must have sewn the backing to a used blanket in a huge asterik and then tied the quilt top to both. My kids loved it and one time took to a church sleep in and got many compliments.
Since I loved to make clothes, toys, etc. that satisfied any curiosity I had about quilts for a long time. All I had ever seen was patchwork quilts that didn't have any particular design or anything to them and they just didn't interest me enough to want to make one.
Then a few years ago, my father's mother started telling me about teaching at a senior citizen's group and they were making a fall wall hanging and all the ladies were handmaking a quilt to raffle off.
She is immensely talented, but lives across the country from me. I did get curious though and picked up a quilting magazine and found out that the world of quilt is an amazing place of colors, textures, designs, and once i realized that since you use small pieces to make the blocks, that meant you had to buy a lot of different colors of fabric. Well I had always loved fabric, but you bought one kind for one outfit...oh, this was going to be FUN!!! I thought I was going to get one book and read it and turn out quilts like the lucy episode where she was working in a factory and the candy just kept a coming!!!!
So, i went crazy buying everything in site and got seriously out of control until I got very sick and couldn't sew for over a year. Now hubby is disabled and we have to be careful, but I would say I owe the itch to my family, but my grandma n. pushed me to scratch it. I still sew other things sometimes, but my love, my passion is all about quilting now. It's like finding your way home and you didn't even know you were lost. :wink:
01-24-2009, 08:01 PM
#37
Super Member
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: North Carolina
Posts: 3,579
I took home ec and teen living( fancy name for sewing class) in high school because none of the other electives interested me. My grandmother and grandfather quilted and I had grown up seeing the things they quilted and I own one of the quilts, which was made for me by my grandfather before he died in 1988. I think the quilt was made in 1987 before he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. I cherished that quilt and it went with me everywhere I went after i got it and he had passed away. fast forward to Aug/sept of 2007. I was showing my grandma the quilt, showing her some places that were coming loose. This prompted a quilting/sewing discussion because I had made a few dresses and such for friends over the years. My grandmother asked me if I wanted to learn how to quilt. I knew that no one else in my family had an interest in learning how and my grandma has said how she always thought she would pass her knowledge on to my aunt or to one of her granddaughters, but they hadn't shown interest. So I told my grandmother that yes I would be happy to learn from her how to quilt. So she taught me what she could seeing as how she can't sew anymore due to arthritis and bad eye sight. What I didn't learn from her , I got books and I joined this website and have learned many things. I made my grandma a quilt and gave it to her this Christmas and I have heard from my aunt that my grandma wraps herself in it everyday while she sits in the living room. :) Grandma will be 89 this July.
01-25-2009, 03:11 PM
#38
Member
Join Date: Oct 2007
Posts: 36
It's been a while since I posted anything, but this one "kinda" caught my interest. I was the last of 11 children with a gap of almost 8 years between my next sister and I. (There had been 2 deaths between her and I.) Otherwise, the rest of the bunch was only about 2 years apart; like clockwork! Needless to say, I think my mother was probably pretty tired of dealing with all of us, but somehow, (maybe she knew she was done with all the birthing stuff,) had patience and tolerance for her last little sickly girl. Skinny, scrawny, sickly at the time, (but you should see me now!) respiratory problems, hard of hearing, a wandering eye, but a mother's love made me feel special anyway. Due to physical problems and the joy of living in the country, isolated from anyone closeby that was near my age, and an older sister who thought I was a big bother, my Mother took me under her special wing and taught me many of the gentle arts, that she had learned as the daughter of a fairly well to do family in Georgia. (NO! I didn't say we were wealthy! Far from it in fact!) I learned to sew at a very early age. I could run her old Singer treadle machine when I was about 6 years old, with guidance, of course! She taught me to knit, and to crochet. Somehow, she had never learned to follow directions; but could look at something and know how to do it. I taught myself to read directions for both when I was 9 years old when my oldest sister sent me some leftover yarn and crochet thread and a couple of instruction books. I learned to tat, which is almost a lost art. It is so slow, but the end results are very pretty. I remember my Mother crocheting or tatting the yokes for the homeade slips she made for me and for the collars to my blouses/dresses.
But the quilting: Sorry if I got diverted... I guess Mother was a "Purist" when it came to quilting. Everything was hand sewn. My first pieced quilt was a simple bow tie. We just had scraps back then: we used what we had. It would have been unheard of to buy new fabric, cut it up in pieces, and sew it back together again!!! So what that the whites weren't all the same? Some might have been flour sacks and the others a lot tighter woven and whiter. I know my stitches were pretty long, and if I got tired working on my pieces, Mother would say, "Just quit." "Remember whatever is worth doing, is worth doing well." I remember putting all my squares together with her help, and using an old blanket as batting, and a half worn out sheet as the backing. My, have times changed! I have no idea what happened to that old quilt. Life is sometimes unfair and somethings that should be remembered are lost in the dust of bad times.
Within the past 2 years, I have started quilting again. Have moved up from one long arm machine to a better one, and have been fortunate that a local quilt shop refers me to quite a few people. The world turns around in mysterious ways, and I'm sure my Mother would be proud of me right now if she were able to know what I'm doing. She would have been 109 this year; I am 71.
Sorry for all the rambling, guess I needed to vent a little bit. My next to the oldest sister is in Georgia, (86) has just been taken off a ventilator, and is not expected to last much longer. I can't be there, so I guess I am here, rattling away at the computer. Thanks to everyone on the list for reading this or thinking about me. All prayers for "Ida" would certainly be appreciated. I truly didn't mean to "write a book," I promise I will be shorter my next post!
But the quilting: Sorry if I got diverted... I guess Mother was a "Purist" when it came to quilting. Everything was hand sewn. My first pieced quilt was a simple bow tie. We just had scraps back then: we used what we had. It would have been unheard of to buy new fabric, cut it up in pieces, and sew it back together again!!! So what that the whites weren't all the same? Some might have been flour sacks and the others a lot tighter woven and whiter. I know my stitches were pretty long, and if I got tired working on my pieces, Mother would say, "Just quit." "Remember whatever is worth doing, is worth doing well." I remember putting all my squares together with her help, and using an old blanket as batting, and a half worn out sheet as the backing. My, have times changed! I have no idea what happened to that old quilt. Life is sometimes unfair and somethings that should be remembered are lost in the dust of bad times.
Within the past 2 years, I have started quilting again. Have moved up from one long arm machine to a better one, and have been fortunate that a local quilt shop refers me to quite a few people. The world turns around in mysterious ways, and I'm sure my Mother would be proud of me right now if she were able to know what I'm doing. She would have been 109 this year; I am 71.
Sorry for all the rambling, guess I needed to vent a little bit. My next to the oldest sister is in Georgia, (86) has just been taken off a ventilator, and is not expected to last much longer. I can't be there, so I guess I am here, rattling away at the computer. Thanks to everyone on the list for reading this or thinking about me. All prayers for "Ida" would certainly be appreciated. I truly didn't mean to "write a book," I promise I will be shorter my next post!
01-25-2009, 03:43 PM
#39
Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: northern, CA
Posts: 708
In 1980 I took a quilting class and it was all done by hand with cardboard templates and many squares desighned by myself. Although it was a sampler quilt the center 6 squares were personal, so I called it a memory quilt. I made it for my son for high school graduation and all of his freinds wanted one too. This quilt was done one square at a time for quilting then all were joined with sashing and more batting. I did sew the first side of each sashing strip by machine, but the back was hand sewn. I did make one for his freind Dana too and after that made many baby quilts. For a few years I didn't seem to get around to it but then in 2003 my sister-in-law got me back into it making a cathedral window quilt. I never got that finished ( guilt on that one) because it was for my daughter and she didn't want it. But I have made many over the past five + years.
Here are the first 2 I did
Here are the first 2 I did
01-25-2009, 04:20 PM
#40
Super Member
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Somewhere in SANTA Land.
Posts: 9,696
My Grand Mother started me sewing when I was a very young girl. I had always wanted to learn to sew & have been sewing most all of my life. A few years ago, a dear friend of mine said lets make a walling hanging together. She had the easiest pattern, so we shopped for our fabric & started on our project. At that time, she lived in a different city than I did, so we shared all of our questions & solutions through email. Now she lives here in the same city with me & we are still sewing together. It's truly been a wonderful time for me. I love sharing together. I have made several quilts since then.
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