Quilting For Dummies-Class 1

On Monday night I had my first quilting class. It went pretty well, considering my total lack of experience. It's a small class with four ladies (including myself) with very few of us actually having any sewing experience at all. If the average age is 40, it's because I am bringing the average way down. We spent the evening familiarizing ourselves with the rotary cutter and learning about "a scant quarter inch". We spent a lot of time just folding the fabric so that we could actually cut it. We did some measuring with a square ruler with enough lines to make anyone go cross-eyed. Lots and lots of measuring. And then we measured some more. I loved how we were continuously told that quilting is different than sewing. Mostly because my foray into sewing hasn't gone real well. I like how in quilting everything seems to be uniform. That appeals to my meticulous nature.

The big accomplishment of the night? Cutting all our strips. I didn't do completely poorly even though I did needed a fair amount of one-on-one help to get started. As it got later and later, I got really excited because it seemed like we weren't going to be using our sewing machines that night and I hadn't had time to sit down and sew to get myself familiar with the machine. I hadn't made a bobbin with the thread or threaded the machine. In fact, I still need the manual in order to thread the machine and I have never wound a bobbin by myself. I didn't want the class to be the place where I had to learn.

We ended up using our machines after all. But Miss Glenda was very kind to me and helped me get my machine going. I ended up being the last one finished and the last one to leave, but Miss Glenda stayed and let me finish. I told her that I was interested in learning how to sew garments and did she know anyone who might be willing to help me learn. Wonder of wonders, she said she would be willing to teach me. I was really excited by that. She said to give her a few weeks as she's expecting a new grandbaby and wanted to see what it was going to be first. That sounds great because Brian is about to start an outage and my free time is going to be greatly reduced for about the next six weeks. But I am excited. I am nearly motivated enough to get my apron out and finish sewing that.

Monday's homework was to sew all the strips together, cut them into 6.5" strips and then press. We had to do one before we left on Monday. Here is my effort: