When I teach a beginner class I am continually amazed how quick the learning curve is today. Students immediately take to the rotary cutter and machine piecing and quilting. Back in the 70's everyone hand pieced and hand quilted and we cut out the pieces using cardboard and sandpaper (that addition was considered innovative) and THAT'S THE WAY WE LIKED IT! We were pure and true to the craft. I however discovered that straight seams in a log cabin could be sewn on a machine and if you never confessed to anyone, they couldn't tell. I wasn't the only one who caught on and by then, I was teaching a class with sewing machine optional piecing. People like Mary Ellen Hopkins were teaching strip piece methods using really good Gingher scissors to cut long strips and sew them together and then crosscut the sewn pieces. Wow! We compromised our purity immediately.

The big change came with the rotary cutter. We all debated whether we wanted to buy the pizza cutter thing AND a mat AND a big bundle of acrylic rulers (one for each size strip). We did it and never looked back. Of course, people at guild meetings would still stand up with their Burgoyne Surrounded blue and white solid color quilts and proclaim "Two years of piecing and two years on the frame." We unpure sat in the back and whispered to each other "Two nights with the rotary cutter and two nights with the machine."

By the early 90's machine quilting was fairly common but could not be compared to hand quilting as far as the old timers were concerned. Harriet Hargrave was out there preaching, Carol Bryer Fallert was winning big prizes but still quilt guilds put a big premium on the hand quilted. That was before everyone tried it and found out how hard it is to make it beautiful.

Today's students don't need to be talked into machine quilting--most would rather skip the hand stuff and directly to the machine. They want to spend their learning time on what will be the most productive. I still love to hand quilt, but I wish I were a better machine quilter so that I could actually finish all my quick pieced tops in my own lifetime. I love how fast everything is today and how accurate. I also love all the variety of fabric and notions available, but sometimes, (just sometimes) I miss the slow rhythm of the early days when a mariner's compass was a week's work and a quilt a year was reason to brag. However, missing it and doing it are two different things. At this stage in my quilting if it can't be rotary cut, forgetaboutit! If it can't be machine sewn, it won't be sewn and machine quilted is THE WAY I LIKE IT!