So last june or July I decided to get a new sewing machine, and actually wanted to get a good one, rather than a cheap one that I had to replace every two years. Doing some on-line research, I somehow found the LAMQG, the first modern quilt guild in America, formed in October of 2009 by two amasing women, Latifa Saafir and AlissaHaight Carlton. Going on their website, I found a community of quilters who support each other with the utmost respect and pure love of the art of quilting and creating. I not only found resources for the machine I bought (a Pfaff Quilt Expressions 4.0 bought at Tanner's in Westchester http://www.tannersewandvac.com/), but a great source of inspiration and motivation. While I had been sewing quilts for twn years, it was all on my own with no real interaction with any other quilters, kind of the same as with my sewing of clothing, No classes, no stimulus other than being a fabric whore and not being able to stop myself. I've since made a quilt, and several other quilted project for different swaps LAMQG has thrown. The first one I made was a quilted bag from one of the other members fabrics- we swapped fabrics and then could add only one fabric to create something with their fabrics but with our own vision.
The next project was a holiday one- make something for the holidays, or something for the kitchen for a member whose name you pulled out of a hat. You knew who you were giving the gift to, so you could design something for them. I drew allison, and she told me she had a fiftie's kitchen and collected aprons, so it went from there. The color in this photo is bad, but the bosy of the apron is made of sea-foam green pleather, with white polka-dot ruffles, and quilted pockets made from scraps of the quilt I was working on at the time.
The quilt I was working on was made out of upholstery fabrics, scraps from years of collecing, and men's suiting fabrics. I started making random shapes within shapes within a rectangular block, forcing me to work on my pattern combining skills. I used the circle-within-a-circle technique (see this tuturial here: www.hgtv.com/crafting/pieced-curves-so-simple/index.html), with no real plan in my mind while doing so. After assembling about half of the blocks I thought I was going to make,I realized it needed some relief from the overwhelming busyness and spaced them with some solid wools.
And within 2 minutes of placing it on the bed to take a picture of it, Benita, the 22 year old wonder cat, was happily investigating.
This was also my first exience with free-motion quilting. I followed the lines of the circles-within-circles, thrying free-motion stitch in the ditch, and then on the solid wool blocks, I mirrored the eof shapes I used for the other blocks and and learned that I'm not so good at being free and casual! It took me a while to get the hang of it and become comfortable, and to get the settings on the machine correct. Twenty of thirty broken needles later, I was a little better, but this is a skill set I have to work on.
