Thursday, September 23, 2010

Quilting Makes Sense to Me...

I have been feeling this blog welling up inside me for a while...unfortunately I have been anti-computer lately. 

Quilting just makes sense to me...I really like the creativity of picking fabrics, patterns and creating something out of nothing (of course the men in our lives say - "only quilters can take a perfectly fine piece of fabric and cut it into little pieces only to sew it back together again", which is sort of true...but the "true" quilters from the past sewed pieces of fabric that were NOT perfectly fine...they were something else completely like feed sacks, scraps from clothing, and other household items that were no longer seviceable like table cloths etc and made them into blankets, which served a HUGE purpose in their hoseholds during the days before central heat and air! 

Everytime I quilt I figure out how different things might have come about (I say might because I am just speculating - I haven't done any research, which I think I will at some point due to my interest in it). 

To be continued...must go outside and play with little man...

OK, I'm back.  For instance, today I was cutting the edges off my charity quilt when I realized that the sides made perfect strips, could this be the reason for "strip" quilting?  It makes sense to me!

Then, of course as you are finishing your quilt there are the triangles that you end up with as you sew the strips together and trim them for the borders and the binding...these make triangles that are all similar in size...did someone decide to sew these together to get the quilts with the star patterns etc?  It makes sense to me!  (Of course now we cut these triangles to get enough, but I am so excited to go through my scrap bags, as I have 3 of them now and may have enough to make a small "scrappy" quilt - whooo hooo!)

Final thought for this blog is how poor planning is the mother of all invention for me.  I can totally understand how quilters of old just gathered some fabric and started and ad libbed as they went along, because that is what I do!!!  I ad lib because a lot of times I don't measure the fabric first and have to get creative to finish the quilt and/or I cannot seem to follow directions (I know what they want me to do...I just get these visits from the "good idea fairy" and end up with my own then at the end).  The quilters of old...didn't have patterns (well some did, but most did not...they just did it), so they had to create their own thing almost everytime they quilted.  It makes sense to me!

Well, that is all for now...gotta put my little man down for a nap.  I also like quilting because it is one of the few things that you can just put down and come back to later (which we do a lot of as mothers -so one more time, it makes sense to me!)

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