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Quilt Pink
Sep. 30th, 2006 06:24 pmToday is the day that a lot of quilt stores are participating in the Quilt Pink event - making blocks that will become quilts that will be auctioned off for the Komen foundation and breast cancer research. I'd seen an article about it in a local newspaper flyer, talking about the Azle quilt store doing it. So today I went out there to give it a try, with some of the handquilting stuff I'd just gotten in a little bag. I was pretty intimidated about going.
I found the place just fine, and sorta felt oddly out of place at first, but they were pretty welcoming. They were all machine oriented, but said sure, I could hand-do it. They gave me a kit for a block, the windblown pattern. Lots of triangles, oh cool, I got to find out how you do the seam allowance sizing for triangles, which I'd been trying to figure out. A kind lady loaned me her 7/8th marked ruler, oh I so want one of those. The kit had white fabric with white vines pattern, and a pink that had a grid pattern on it, but wavy lines - I could tell that was going to drive me nuts, so went into the pile of donated fabrics and got some pink with white polkadots instead.
(OMG the PINK everywhere! Pink fabrics, pink blocks, pink quilts, all these ladies wearing pink shirts. I kept thinking of Maggie. She would have LOVED it.)
I started hand-piecing a few, and was watching them machine piecing, and was tempted to try. One lady had said I was welcome to use her machine. I had told them how I have problems with sewing machines. I swear, they just don't like me. It used to go better. When I had![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bkseiver's really old machine, the one she got to make maternity clothes before I was born, I could mostly get it to sew. And the old antique one Jeff and I found out in California, with the bullet-shaped bobbinholder, that worked okay for me. But anything newer than 1970 seems to be risky. Totally failing to get kattelyn's machine to thread recently really demoralized me. I'm getting twitchier around them. But I decided to go ahead and try. The lady had it set up for me - she did have to show me that you just push a button for it to cut the thread, oops, I didn't know that. And it was just supposed to sew straight lines, how bad could it be? Yeek, it kept dethreading itself every couple of seams, or jumbling up on the back. I wasn't changing anything! They just don't like me. At one point it had me breaking down in tears, that I was going to have to go find the lady again and say it was messed up again. I went off to the bathroom for a few minutes, then went to find her. After that it settled down, and I was able to keep working.
I did eventually get it finished. My first quilt block. I figured it wasn't that good, and I was saying yeah, I figured they'd politely wait until I was gone and put it in the scrap bin... they realized it was my first block and got excited, insisted they would not scrap it, helped me iron it and took a picture of me with it. We all got little pink ribbon pins.
I'm slow, but at least I did something. Other ladies were apparently bringing in PILES of blocks, or in some cases multiple quilts. Wow.
I signed up for their mailing list. There should be a new class list out soon. I saw a neat trick - they had those cheap felt-backed tablecloths you can get at a dollar store (they said) tacked up on the wall, bottom side out, and were using them as a block-arranging area - just press the blocks up there and they mostly stayed up. Of course, this requires an unoccupied wall, but still a cool trick.
I will admit, they're kinda seducing me towards the dark side on the idea of machine piecing. I still want to do a lot of hand piecing - because I can do that on the road, on the couch with the kids, etc. But the machine piecing was kinda cool, too. I find myself wondering if I can manage to convincebkseiver, when she brings the fancy sewing machine in November, to JUST set it up to do straight lines, and show me how to thread it, and NOT try to teach me anything more complicated - because it's just going to get me in trouble and end up with a machine that's not working for me and a disaster. Frankly, even that might end up with a machine that doesn't work for me, but it's tempting, if I could just get a machine that would reliably sew a straight line for me...
On the way home I was struck by a design idea for a twin-size quilt for Maggie. We'll see. I need to do my first one first!
I found the place just fine, and sorta felt oddly out of place at first, but they were pretty welcoming. They were all machine oriented, but said sure, I could hand-do it. They gave me a kit for a block, the windblown pattern. Lots of triangles, oh cool, I got to find out how you do the seam allowance sizing for triangles, which I'd been trying to figure out. A kind lady loaned me her 7/8th marked ruler, oh I so want one of those. The kit had white fabric with white vines pattern, and a pink that had a grid pattern on it, but wavy lines - I could tell that was going to drive me nuts, so went into the pile of donated fabrics and got some pink with white polkadots instead.
(OMG the PINK everywhere! Pink fabrics, pink blocks, pink quilts, all these ladies wearing pink shirts. I kept thinking of Maggie. She would have LOVED it.)
I started hand-piecing a few, and was watching them machine piecing, and was tempted to try. One lady had said I was welcome to use her machine. I had told them how I have problems with sewing machines. I swear, they just don't like me. It used to go better. When I had
bkseiver's really old machine, the one she got to make maternity clothes before I was born, I could mostly get it to sew. And the old antique one Jeff and I found out in California, with the bullet-shaped bobbinholder, that worked okay for me. But anything newer than 1970 seems to be risky. Totally failing to get kattelyn's machine to thread recently really demoralized me. I'm getting twitchier around them. But I decided to go ahead and try. The lady had it set up for me - she did have to show me that you just push a button for it to cut the thread, oops, I didn't know that. And it was just supposed to sew straight lines, how bad could it be? Yeek, it kept dethreading itself every couple of seams, or jumbling up on the back. I wasn't changing anything! They just don't like me. At one point it had me breaking down in tears, that I was going to have to go find the lady again and say it was messed up again. I went off to the bathroom for a few minutes, then went to find her. After that it settled down, and I was able to keep working. I did eventually get it finished. My first quilt block. I figured it wasn't that good, and I was saying yeah, I figured they'd politely wait until I was gone and put it in the scrap bin... they realized it was my first block and got excited, insisted they would not scrap it, helped me iron it and took a picture of me with it. We all got little pink ribbon pins.
I'm slow, but at least I did something. Other ladies were apparently bringing in PILES of blocks, or in some cases multiple quilts. Wow.
I signed up for their mailing list. There should be a new class list out soon. I saw a neat trick - they had those cheap felt-backed tablecloths you can get at a dollar store (they said) tacked up on the wall, bottom side out, and were using them as a block-arranging area - just press the blocks up there and they mostly stayed up. Of course, this requires an unoccupied wall, but still a cool trick.
I will admit, they're kinda seducing me towards the dark side on the idea of machine piecing. I still want to do a lot of hand piecing - because I can do that on the road, on the couch with the kids, etc. But the machine piecing was kinda cool, too. I find myself wondering if I can manage to convince
bkseiver, when she brings the fancy sewing machine in November, to JUST set it up to do straight lines, and show me how to thread it, and NOT try to teach me anything more complicated - because it's just going to get me in trouble and end up with a machine that's not working for me and a disaster. Frankly, even that might end up with a machine that doesn't work for me, but it's tempting, if I could just get a machine that would reliably sew a straight line for me...On the way home I was struck by a design idea for a twin-size quilt for Maggie. We'll see. I need to do my first one first!
