Chapter 1: It begins

Why, she asks?

To call myself a quilting virgin is only half the story, I am also a sewing virgin. I don't think it counts that I sewed a pincushion (or something resembling a pincushion) in the fourth grade, or tried to sew a button on my husband's pants (once!). This said, I do consider myself crafty, and so begins my foray into the quilting (and sewing) world.

My reasons behind entering this sacred art are at best benevolent, and at worst selfish. My mother-in-law is a great quilter. I love everything she makes and have requested she make many, many quilts for me. My house is full of them, but I want more! I know that her UFO (my first quilting term!) list is very long, and I feel guilty when I add to her list. There is no way that she could make everything that I want. We are still waiting for our college graduation wall hanging (we graduated in 1995), so I know that list is LONG. If I could learn to quilt and make my own, I think she would be very happy, as she has hinted on several occasions, even going so far as to buy me a sewing machine. Also, since she didn't have any daughters, I think she would love to pass down all her quilting wisdom to me (hey, someone has to have it)! In all honesty though, I just want more pretty quilts!

So it Begins

History and reasoning aside, I embark on my quest for quilting with noble intentions. Although I am not a sewer, I am of moderate intelligence (I did, after all, graduate from college) and believe that I can follow directions. This couldn't be too hard, right? I went to Quilt Festival in Houston with her a couple of years ago, and those quilts that won first prize didn't look that hard (who am I kidding?), although some of "those crazy quilting ladies" are a little over the top for me. Ok, so I will start at the bottom, first prizes will have to wait, I am not asking for too much.

I figure I will start out with something easy (relative term?) and go from there. My mom-in-law suggests I start with paper piecing so I will have lines to sew along and don't have to cut exact measurements. Ok, so I pick a pattern from a book that I like of a cabin in the woods that she says isn't too hard (for her or me I wonder). I also have my trusty, brand-new sewing machine from my mom-in-law (to be known here on out as MIL), and I am ready to go, right? WRONG!

A Dose of Reality

Who knew there were so many aspects of quilting? Being a quilting virgin, I naively thought all you had to do was sew some pieces together, add a few stitches on top, and you were done. I had seen MIL do it many times-sew, sew, sew, quilt, quilt, quilt, and BAM, here's your quilt! She sure made it look easy-deceptively easy. I have to ask myself what have I gotten into? Now I have to think about fabric (color, pattern, texture, type, blend), sewing machine parts (needle, bobbin, feet, feed dogs-what the ?#!>+! are feed dogs?), batting (weight, type) and who knows what else? I just want to start sewing and a couple of hours later, BAM, here's my quilt. Apparently, to my utter dismay, it doesn't work that way!

Some Actual Sewing...Maybe

So I finally get to the sewing part. I picked the fabrics-fortunately the pattern I picked aided in my decisions-green for trees, brown for cabin, white for mountains, duh!-so it wasn't too difficult of a choice to make. I decided for my first quilt I wasn't going to worry about the batting or backing just yet and ship it off to MIL to finish and quilt, so that part was out of the way. Now all that was left was to tackle the sewing machine.

I can code a website, program in three different computer languages, and type 50 words a minute, but put me in front of a sewing machine and I couldn’t tell you which end is up. So, after staring at the thing for a while, I figure the best place to start is with the directions (although reading directions seems like a novel concept to me) and they are actually quite good at taking me step-by-step through loading (or is it called threading?) the thread up and around 50 different gadgets and finally through the needle and the little bobbin thingy. At this point, I choose to ignore everything else (except feed dogs, I am still pondering that one, which reminds me that I actually did forget to feed the dog) and just start sewing!

Tune in next time to find out how (if?) my first project actually went and if I ever remembered to feed the dog!

©2003 theQuiltingVirgin