bebe

Tell us how long you have been quilting? How you got into the art? How many quilts you have made?? Have you won a prize for your quilt and so on :wink: :wink: :D :D :D :D

bebe

I have been making quilts off and on since I was 9 yoa. My maternal great grandmother was a quilter. She taught me on her treadle. I have been hooked on fabric and the art since then. I have quit making quilts for periods at a time but always go back So unsure how many years to count. I guess I will take credit for 15 years off and on. I am unsure how many quilts I have made but do know many were really wonky in the beginning.
I have never entered a quilt in a show so I have no prizes :( :( I may get brave and enter one in our next years show.

amma

I have loved quilts for as long as I can remember...when I could not crochet, knit, do any kind of handwork anymore I got to thinking about quilting and started up a stash, buying other "necessities" and about 3 years ago made my first block :D :D :D I have numerous tops made and a few other quilted items. Nothing entered anywhere yet...that is quite a ways off, if ever :roll: :lol:

Cathe

I have sewed clothing for nearly 40 years, and quiltmaking for 23. I have won a couple small awards at local events and I have made too many quilts to count. Hundreds, if you include wall quilts and tablerunners.

granny216

Hi, keep quilting. The addiction never goes away. I started in the 70's at a night college class with my sister where we learned to draft patterns and make blocks of different sizes. My sister didn't like the class so didn't do anything with it until the late 90's. Need I mention we are both in our 70's now. I truly believe you should enter a quilt in a show as the judges will look at it and tell you the good things about it and the things that need improvent. I have won many ribbons thru the years. It went a long way in my quilting. I don't do as much any more haven't entered a quilt in about 5 years as it seems like the only time I make a quilt now is for a gift. I know a lot of women who make beautiful quilts but won't enter them in quilt shows as they don't like any negative notes. I make quilts that please me--not the judges.

Scissor Queen

I started my first quilt in 1979. It was an Irish chain and I used cardboard templates and scissors to cut it out. The solid block fabric is a sheet and one of the chain fabrics is a twill weave. I sewed it on my old machine that had problems doing quarter inch seams. I found a batting and backing in 1982 and got it basted together. It laid around like that until 1999 and I got a frame and quilted it by hand. By that time they had invented rotary cutters and cutting mats.

I made another 5 quilts on my old machine and then I bought a Pfaff and it made a huge difference!

Basically that's just the quilt part of the story. My first marrige ended and my second marrige began between the time I started and finished that first quilt. My oldest son was 5 when I started it and 25 when I finished it.

I still have that first quilt. It hangs over the back of hubby's chair. The floral fabric has faded really bad in the last 10 years. The burgandy twill is as vibrant as it was to start with though.

lfw045

I used to get to cut out the squares for my grandma when I was a little thing. I have been sewing, crocheting, embroidering, ect since I was a child. I have tied a few quilts that I made along the way but got really into quilting February a year and a half ago when I quit smoking. It is what has kept me ON the wagon. :D

kwhite

I started to sew when I was around 4 in 1965. I always wanted to quilt but never tried until around 1984 when I took a class in Santa Clara Ca and made this wall hanging. Then onto a "quilt in a day" log cabin and then my wholecloth queensized kit quilt that I won an Honorable mention for at the Marin Needlework & Quilt Show in 1993. I didn't do a whole lot after that for a while. But now I am into it full tilt.

KathyTries2quilt

Well, this should get a chuckle out of everyone...

My First Quilt...

In November of 1983, I found out I was pregnant. Excited as all young mothers to be are, I wanted to make something "Just for you" for my baby. As luck would have it, I went to a yard sale that next weekend. The lady had strips of POLYESTER material in the most beautiful pastel shades!!! I could not resist. She also had the softest rainbow shaded "couch throw" I'd ever felt... I bought it to.
At the time, I was a maid at the Rendezvous Inn in Panama City Beach, Florida. I knew absolutely NOTHING about quilting, nor did I know anyone that did. Everyday at work, I'd wonder how in the world I was going to turn all that beautiful material into a quilt...
One of the Canadian women that "lived" in the motel every winter did needlepoint... She was working on it one day when we went by to change her linens.
I thought, "I could do THAT to the top and that would hold it all together!!!"
From all of that, my daughter's quilt was born... It never crossed my mind to cut the fabric into squares. I took one of the strips of polyester (the kind that almost every woman had a "suit coat and pants" made out of at the time) and laid it across the crib so that it hung down far enough to hide the mattress, and cut it. From that strip, I cut all the rest of the material into matching strips and started sewing it together.
Naturally, or so it seemed to me, those seams were really bulky. How did I fix that? Well, I sewed each side of the seam down, that's how! So instead of one seam, the strips had three! (LOL)
When I got all that finished, it looked kind of plain to me... and I remembered the lady needlepointing. I didn't have any "real" embroidery patterns, so I decided to make some!
I found a gorgeous child's coloring book, bought some plain old carbon paper (after all these years, some of the tracing can still be seen) and traced a puppy, a jack-in-the-box, an owl, a kitten, and a squirrel on the top and started to sew.
I didn't know how to embroidery either, so I had to buy a needle BIG enough to put all that thread through the hole! I could NOT figure out HOW that lady made such tiny stitches with ALL THAT thread!
While "coloring with thread" the first picture I'd traced on, it crossed my mind that THAT sewing could be what held the top and back together!!! So, on the Second picture, the puppy I think, I pinned THE FOUR CORNERS (ONLY) together and started doing that way.
I can't tell you the number of needles I went through, nor the HUGE amounts of thread I wound up using....
When my daughter, Michelle Leigh Combs, was born, I added to the center of it her name, weight, time of birth, name of the hospital and her doctor's name.
She was born a little premature and had to stay in the hospital for a total of 9 days. Everyone there oohed and ahhhed over my quilt... no one ever told me that it was absolutely nothing like any quilt they'd ever seen before.
It did exactly what I wanted it to though. My daughter loved it more than the Charlie Brown character loved his. She's always kept it on her bed, and now that she has a daughter of her own, Lily loves to use Mommy's quilt to.
After all the years of HEAVY usage, it's stained and tattered. In my opinion, the older it gets the more beautiful it gets!!!
When I speak to her today, I think I'll tell her to bring it with her next time she comes to see me and I'll take a picture of it and her and share with you.
I suppose it exemplifies the term, "free-style" quilting.

bebe

great story Kathy :D :D Is the quilt still around???