My Quilting Journey!
Jude, Mac Couture (my quilting idol) and ME at my very FIRST Quilt Show - Road to California
I have been quilting for a little over a year, but I have known how to sew most of my life. My grandma taught me to sew when I was younger and my Momma and Grandma bought me my own sewing machine when I was a young teen. I used that sewing machine until it broke. Conveniently, it broke while I was making 16 Smurf costumes for Halloween and I had to complete the task so I went out and bought my Singer Patchwork. I started taking sewing lessons from a sweet old lady who reminded me so much of my grandma. Over the years, I had picked up some bad habits like my poor posture, hand placement, not pinning my seams and kind of just being a lazy seamstress. Well, my sewing teacher whipped me right back into shape and I quickly remembered that I didn’t love making garments.
During this time, my neighbor Jude was showing me all of her quilts that she made. We connected over our love for leopard print, baking and now had a shared interest in sewing. I mentioned that I really wanted to learn to quilt. Well, Jude took that with a ton of excitement and started me out with hand-quilting. I learned a technique called EPP which stands for English Paper Piecing. I started cutting out my paper hexagons, picked some fabric and went to town. The problem is, EPP is a SLOW process because every tiny stitch is by hand. Sigh!!! So, over to Jude’s I went to discuss maybe using my new machine to make a quicker quilt. I needed some quick gratification. She talked to me about fabric choices and we made a trip to our local quilt shop where there was every single fabric design you could ever imagine. I didn’t even realize that California had fabric stores other than Joanns, ohhhh and I was quickly informed that “Big Box” fabric isn’t the same as ‘real fabric store’ fabric. I don’t play by the rules, so I still sometimes use the big box fabrics. Shhhhh.
What people don’t know about me is that I have a VERY short attention span. I need very little information to move to the next step. It’s a flaw of mine, but I don’t really love to learn. I can’t even blame that on our society and the evolution of instant gratification because I’ve been this way my whole life and just want to complete the project. I digress. So, Jude would give me a little instruction and off I went. She describes it like this. “So you know when you’re on the 405 freeway and there is traffic. It’s like I rolled my window down, shouted a few things while we were stopped and then traffic lighted up and she just drove off and did it!”
We laugh at that often and sometimes she will say “I need to show you something, but not on the 405 freeway. Come over when you have some time”
I have Jude to thank for my quilting obsession. It’s a magical sense of therapy and a wonderful art that will be lost for future generations if we don’t keep it alive. If you can sew a straight line, you can quilt. I promise you! Let’s create the things we wish existed. Thank you for being here! It means so much to me.
XOXO…Danette
