Englishquilter's first blog

                

Free to quilt            

          

                                       

Welcome to my first ever blog – something I said I’d never do! I promise not to bore you with stories about my housework or health or politics or opinions, but I just thought it was time to share my enjoyment of fabric and patchwork and quilting with anyone who is interested enough to visit my site: www.englishquilter.co.uk   

Since I was lucky enough to retire early, 5 years ago, I have had time to indulge in this passion and I have made so many new friends.  I thank them all for what they have taught me and for sharing their enthusiasm and encouraging me to discover abilities I never thought I had.

So a little about my journey:

Although I have never considered myself to be artistic, I do have imagination and a desire to be creative. I left school believing I could not sew because the teachers didn’t have the time to encourage me and others like me, who showed little aptitude. But I was always attracted to handy-crafts and collected a variety of craft books. For a while I dabbled with various projects such as stencilling, stamping, dough craft and some basic home furnishings and had quite a successful phase of making 3D picture frames filled with dolls house furniture. This led to my visiting car boot sales on a regular basis, looking for things to do up and raking through bits of broken jewellery to find interesting things to make miniature items to fill them. To this day I cannot throw anything away that might ‘come in handy’ and it is such a delight when I have just the right thing stashed away when I need it!

The trouble was that I had so many ideas in my head that I couldn’t decide what to do first and I realised I needed to focus on one direction. Then one day at a craft fair, I had an epiphany! A lady was selling cushions made from printed panels. The fabrics were mainly American folksy designs, Debbie Mumm and the like, which were rather charming, though some were cats, dogs and horses etc. which don’t appeal to me at all. But I was fascinated by the quilting – something I had never really noticed before. I went home and looked at the quilting books I had and decided this was something I wanted to do. Of course, I realised that patchwork went hand in hand with this and I began searching for remnants at boot sales as well. Then by chance, not long after, I saw some beautiful handmade children’s dresses at another craft fair and managed to scrounge several large bags of scraps of lovely American craft fabrics. Hence my stash was born!

Before long I made my first quilt – an ambitious project – about 7ft square with scalloped Dresden Fans around the edge. I copied the sampler layout from a picture in a magazine, without a pattern.  I adore English country charm and rosebuds and all things pink and pretty, so it was made from all Laura Ashley pinks and blues, some recycled and some new. I made it on a very small machine and didn’t even know what a walking foot was, let alone have one. It was far from perfect, but it is now on the bed in my sewing room and I sit on it every day.

Whilst on a trip to Australia in 2004, I bought a bundle of quilting magazines to read on the journey home. By the time I got off the plane I was obsessed with long-arm quilting! These machines were not so easy to come by in this country at that time and I continued to piece and quilt with a domestic machine, by this time upgraded to a Bernina Virtuosa which I still love to this day. My skills improved with practice, but I wasn’t making much progress with free motion quilting.

My best attempt was on this country style quilt I made for a very dear (and grateful) friend.

I drew feathers on with a water soluble pen and slowly and carefully sewed over the lines, Not bad, but I still wanted to do a lot better! 
Eventually in 2013, after much soul-searching and encouragement from the best big brother in the world (my hero), I took the plunge and bought my ‘retirement gift to myself’.  I now have a Handiquilter Avanté 18 set up on an 8ft Studio Frame in my loft. (It would be 12ft if I had a larger loft!)

Here she is – her name is Auntie!

Read the next instalment of my blog to find out how I got on with her.
Until next time -Happy Quilting!
Janet