I'm gonna be a quilter!

Yep. You read that right. I'm even taking classes. Yep, you read that right too.
There's a series of classes here at the university called Lifelong Learning. And the lovely lady who's teaching the class invited me to join. She's an amazing quilter - she even has a fiber art show at a local gallery going up soon. Don't believe me? Take a gander at this:


Yes, it's a quilt! For more of her portfolio, and closeups of this quilt, go here.

For our class, I'll not be doing anything like this complicated. But for me, it will be plenty complicated enough. Last week was the second class, but my first. I was surprised at how detailed she was being, and at how much of a stickler she was for precision. I was thinking to myself, "it's a quilt, for cryin' out loud, not brain surgery!" I mean, we were taking into account the diameter of the thread! HOW is that enough to make a difference?? But then she explained that yes, being ever-so-slightly off by 1/16th of an inch might not mean much now, but if that square repeats even just 7 more times, by the end you'll be off by half an inch, and that'll drive you crazy trying to compensate. So a little bit of time spent getting it right on the front end will save a lot of seam-ripping and frustration towards the end.
Also, she covered things like:
-which side to press your seams to. This would not seem like a big deal, and it really isn't, but if it's all the same, then pressing everything towards the darker square will prevent the excess showing through the lighter squares once your quilt is finished. makes sense, dunnit?
-on some machines, the first stitch or two bunches. Again, it's not a huge deal, but there are ways around it, and just realizing that it is something that could throw your squares off by as much as an eighth of an inch or that it could make the squares pucker in places can make a difference.
-If you cut all of the pieces of one section at once, and then sew them all at once, you'll get into a rhythm, and things will move faster and with more precision than if you cut and sewed one square at a time before cutting and sewing the next one.

There were tons of little tips like that, none of them particularly earth-shattering, but the combined effect of them might just possibly keep my from ripping my hair out, and who knows - it just might result in a quilt that I'm actually proud of!



I know the curiosity is killing you, so I'll show you my computer-generated mock-up of the quilt I'm making. I made this so that I could see how all of the colors would work together once I was finished.

won't my mommy be so proud o' me?