Introducing Quilting 101

Quilting, as I learned from bride, is the mating with thread by hand or sewing machine three layers of material: the pieced top layer, battling in the middle followed by a fabric backing layer.

When my wife and her quilting buddy, Gretchen, talked about quilting, they were referring to using beautifully designed sheets of cotton fabric cut into small pieces sewn together to form beautiful designs where the colors are prominent. This the general layout of the top layer.

So the designs in the original sheets of fabric can barely be noticed and admired; one form of art replaces another.

Ill mention some of the pitfalls I encountered as a quilting aide to my wife.

First I need to mention that we both are left handed. The tools and aids are for right handed people. However, there are scissors for left handed people, but we never used them. Not once did we consider buying them.

Another perverse challenge for me was cutting smallish pieces from large ish pieces of cotton fabric. I had to learn to cut the material different from the instructions for the project. I was really interesting to cut material using the special right-handed template that came with the project’s how-to-booklet. The part that was a blast was demonstrating how to use the templates to right handed quilters. My wife, even at the very early stages of dementia , relegated the use of the special templates to me!

The last several years I was invited to sit in my wife’s quilting classes.

It got to the point that Carole’s hand tremors were more of an issue that the dementia.

She gave up the activities needed for completing a project except for the use of the sewing machine.

Cutting fabric was no slam dunk for me. I never did master cutting small pieces using a single blade rotary cutter. I willing to bet it was because I was left handed! The pieces cut of a particular pattern were not “perfectly” matched. So my wife went into “save the cutters ass” by ironing, stretching and a lot of praying.

If that didn’t do the trick, measuring pieces was the last resort. It was not uncommon that I needed a magnifying lens to accomplish this feat.

Cutting new pieces was not an option for my frugal wife.

To get the full experience of “quilting,”Carole and Gretchen decided to sew in the ditch on the their first project rather then paying to have the quilting done using a long arm quilting machine.

Sewing in the ditch is nothing more than sewing the three layers together by sewing over the stitch lines of the pieced top layer.

Let me list the steps to accomplish this feat.

The backing is stretched and taped to a large surface; usually a large table. The batting is fastened down with tape, next. The pieced top fabric is taped last.

The three layers are fastened together with curved safety pins. The project is removed from the table and sewn together over the seams of the top layer either by hand or by a sewing machine.

I need to add the last to steps of sewing in the ditch: putting band aides on the traumatized fingers during the pinning step. Naturally the last step is to remove your blood from the top layer with hydrogen peroxide!

Wishing you the best.