Taking Up Quilting- How To & Why

     

        Quilting is many things.  It is means of expressing your creativity while decorating your home, an opportunity to socialize and make new friends, and a good way to spend a rainy day at home.  Quilting is a relaxing, enjoyable hobby, by which you can challenge yourself to hone your skills and broaden your knowledge.  And you can feel more connected to our ancestors as you explore the history of this traditional pastime.  But above all- quilting is an excuse to buy fabric!  With this in mind, I think that as you take up quilting your first priority should be  accumulating a “stash”. 

        This advice might seem counterintuitive.  A more sensible approach might be to take a beginning quilting class, where you will learn to make a very basic quilt from a few very simple, coordinating fabrics.  How interesting is that?  Actually there is nothing wrong with this plan, but it should not interfere with your main goal of buying fabrics you love.  This hunter-gatherer activity will put you in touch with your inner self, and help you to define your style.  “Who am I really?” you may have asked yourself.  A few fabric shopping expeditions should provide the answer.  

     

  I have been sewing and embroidering since I was a young girl, but I just took up quilting about ten years ago.  Before giving any thought to specific projects, I went on a quilt store “shop-hop” with my friends in Ohio.  By the end of the week I had laid the foundations of a very respectable stash of fabrics that worked together.  Eventually I used many of them for my first project- the scrappy “blended” quilt pictured here.

Simple piecing and beautiful fabric- this is the perfect combination for a first quilt.    

Other fabrics from this first shop-hop are still in my stash, waiting for the right project.  A couple of years ago I found the perfect use for the pictorial fabric pictured at the left. 

It became the center square for a feathered cross wall quilt.  I brought the block to Quilter’s Corner in Finleyville, PA, where the owner helped me find some Jo Morton prints that would be perfect with my sheep.  A Kansas Troubles print pulled together the color theme, and fabrics from my stash made up the saw tooth border. 

Here are some Do’s & Don’ts to remember when it comes to shopping for quilt fabric:

Do- seek out the best shops in your area.  These shops are not on every corner or in every mall & shopping center, so you may have to drive half an hour or more.  

Don’t- go to Joann’s for fabric.  Joann’s is fine for basic supplies and Viking sewing machines, but their quilt fabric is of poor quality.

Do- Enlist your friends to shop for fabric with you.  Just be sure these friends will be supportive of your choices and will not try to impose their tastes on you.  And find friends who have roughly the same shopping style.  My friend, Patty, and I are a successful shopping duo because we like shops that specialize in historical and traditional fabrics.  And both of us can spend a couple of hours at a quilt shop without realizing how much time has gone by.  This could drive some women crazy, so compatibility is essential.

Don’t- bring your husband fabric shopping, if you can possibly help it.  Husbands have notoriously short attention spans, and they tend to ask annoying, irrelevant questions like, “What are you going to make with that?”  

Do- Buy what you love.  Many shops have a large selection of “fat quarters”, which are great for stash building.  Half yard cuts are even better.  If you find a large scale print with lots of colors, consider purchasing it either for a border or for alternate setting squares.  Three yards is enough border fabric for even the largest bed quilt; setting squares will require about two yards.  And if you are into “modern quilting”, you may not even need a border fabric.  So you can just start collecting fats, halves, and a few one yard cuts.  

Don’t- worry about what you are going to do will all your fabric.  Sooner or later you will be inspired to make something.  In the mean time you can enjoy looking at your beautiful fabrics.  

N.B.- While you are collecting fabric be sure to acquire a few books as well, as they will provide  inspiration as you begin your new hobby.  Even the smallest quilt shops often stock a wonderful selection of books.  Whether your taste runs to traditional, modern, primitive, or Civil War era, you can find books to suit your fancy.  You will need one good "how to" book.  I recommend the Better Homes and Gardens Complete Guide to QUILTING; this book is widely available.  The rest of your quilt library should be fun books with beautiful pictures, which you will look at for hours until you finally decide, "I want to make that!"  Then start looking through your fabric stash.