Thursday 16 January 2014

Exhilarating

Yes, exhilarating, is the word I've used to describe how I felt last night. I was at my quilt guild meeting, giving a short presentation about how I quilt my quilts on my domestic machine. Wow. I had 5 of my quilts with me to talk about, and the quilty ladies just ate up every word!

I was part of this month's Members Showcase, in which 5 of our quilters each got some time to talk about our quilt journey. It was really interesting to see a body of work from each person, and hear how each one got to where they are now.

And what an honour to be invited to share at this level. The ladies were very interested to know the details of how I actually get the quilting part done on my home sewing machine. It seems to be a crazy idea to many!  And they were quite fascinated that I've tackled this part of quilting without a long arm machine.

This quilt was one of the ones I had in my showcase, and it is a freshly finished one. I worked like mad to have it ready to show!  Ok, maybe I'll add a few more quilting lines, but basically it's a finish.

These are the two colours of blocks in the quilt. In the pink blocks, I quilted a freehand loopy flower, and in the blue blocks, I quilted a bit of crosshatching, using a ruler and freemotion. In the future, I want to try a smaller crosshatch, but this was a good learning experience.

I was speaking with a couple of quilters after my presentation, and comparing my early quilting stitches to this recent quilting. I was pleased to point out the difference, and encouraged people to just jump in and start.

And just because I know you've been looking for the dragonfly quilt, I will tell you it is finished, and nearly in the hands of its recipient. All will soon be revealed. It will be worth seeing, I promise.

Linking up with Leah Day this time, here.

4 comments:

  1. Congrats on your speaking engagement! And your quilt is amazing! Great job!

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  2. Hey, I was at that meeting! It's nice to put a face to the author of a blog I read. I thought your presentation was great and your quilts were beautiful (especially the one you have posted above.) Your Christmas quilt made me want to go home and practice my FMQ -- so far I haven't done much more than stipples and swirls. (though I have great dreams of doing much more.)

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  3. Awesome! What a great quilt to show off too. :)

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