My Quilting Family

News from the cooking sister.

I received an email from my sister Paula, who is trying to finish a quilt she started 10 years ago. She has managed to add an inner border and 3 of the 4 pieces of the outer border to her quilt top all on her own. I'm so proud. It has only taken her 2 weeks. OK, 10 years and 2 weeks.

Then I got to this part of her message:

"I have some questions on having it quilted, I am not sure how to have it quilted on the plate pattern? The woman who has the quilt store has a machine and does quilting but it is like giving your baby to a sitter for the first time."

Plate? Funny, I though she said they were blue and white stars? I think the "plate" reference means that she is finishing a Dresden Plate quilt! This sister had issues with piecing when she took a her first class with me 15 years ago. Later, when we introduced the Dresden Plate in our block-of-the-month, she decided that hand applique was oh-so-much easier than sewing all of those pieces together. Further illustrating the differences in our DNA.

The funniest part of her message is the comparison of giving your quilt to a quilter and leaving your baby with a sitter. When you think about it, you can always get a new sitter, but once that quilt is quilted - it is all grown up. Too late for major changes. Wait until she hears my lecture on batting. I feel pretty strongly that a batting can make or break the look of your quilt. There isn't a right or wrong, you just have to know how you want to use the finished quilt to make the right batting decision.

Paula's finishing quest was spurred by the desire to make her grandson a quilt. His room is decorated in dinosaurs. I packed up a fat quarter bundle of Dino prints, one of our 3-6-9 patterns and a quick note and shipped it off to her before I left town for Quilt Market. Our 3-6-9 is a perfect beginner pattern and I thought it was something she could get finished before Ryan is more interested in girls than dinosaurs!

Out of the blue:

My youngest daughter appeared in the family room last night proudly displaying a cute little purse that she had made herself using the sewing machine in our guest room. The workmanship was excellent. The purse is lined, has french seams on the bottom and is totally reversible. Adorable! She had cut-up some old t-shirts to use for fabric and drafted her own pattern. Wow! I was impressed!

Lindsay is my crafty kid, but she has been working in the kitchen of a restaurant for over a year and I was pretty sure she had an overdose of those cooking genes. Now that she was finished she had a zillion questions about the process she used. For some reason she refused to consult me at the time, some foolishness about wanting to figure it out for herself, but she took notes for her next project. We discussed options and I did mention that I knew where she could get some wonderful cotton fabric.... and a magnetic snap closure..... and some interfacing......

There may be hope for my fabric stash yet!

Now I want to get my hands on that bag and turn it into a pattern!

Karen