I seems that a lot of us love fabric. Da The colors, prints, shading, textures, and finishes that the manufacturers are coming up with are tremendous. How can we help but be excited and creative and find sooooooo much that we need. The fabrics, together with a multitude of pattern designs, quilting groups and guilds, classes, on line tutorials, and .....quilt shops, make starting a quilt top easy and fun! At the shop we do our best to tempt you with our ever changing samples and displays and we love, love, love to shop for the prettiest fabrics and work very hard to bring in fabrics that we can sell for $9.95 per yard or less. All of this, the shopping, the dreaming, the pattern selection, the work days and cutting and stitching and pressing are all a process that we enjoy. We are so proud to have created the quilt tops and everyone likes or loves them. The Christmas Crab says, "It is good!!! "
What then?
Until quite recently, we could choose between hand quilting or tying the quilts. When I was growing up we often had a quilt frame occupying the living room (and they did occupy the living room). It could get cramped, considering that in those days we only had one television and it was in the living room, and my mother ran a boarding house and usually had about 5 or 6 borders plus 2 kids. Well, let just say we didn't always appreciate Quilts. LOL
The US Bicentennial celebrations brought the time honored tradition to the forefront, quilting became stylish! We wanted to make quilts, we were willing to buy quality fabrics because we had been shown how some quilts had lasted for centuries. Artist got inspired and new patterns, techniques, processes and designs evolved. Today, we have everything to work with. If not locally, then we simply order on line and in a short time we are set to go. There are still some of those board and clamp frames around and they still serve a purpose, especially for a good old fashioned Quilting Bee but we have so many more options now. What a wonderful time to be a quilter. There are no limits. Let yourself go. Have fun and always do your best but remember when we look at those old quilts we are not seeing perfection. More likely we are seeing skill learned through necessity and practice.
