My Queen's Guide skill - Quilting

As I've already said in my intro post I'm learning how to quilt for my Queen's Guide skill (from now on I'm calling it QG). Lots of people when choosing their skills pick something they have a bit of experience in - my sister has done photography, a friend did cross stitch. I decided to pick something that I have no knowledge of at all. It has been made even harder because at the start of all this I couldn't even use a sewing machine and I refuse to do this by hand.

In Feb I had my first attempt at Quilting. I made a cushion cover from a kit that my mum had bought be before she died. It was a traumatic experience and put me off trying again until now. I suspect part of the trauma of the cusion cover was that I used one of those cheep sewing machines that you can buy in the supermarket. NEVER again. It constantly unthreaded itself and was just a pain to work with.

Many moths later I dug out my mum's old sewing machine (was her mum's before that). It's an old Singer one. I got it serviced (with a bit of help from a friend who has more of a clue about these things than me) and finally set it up on the table on Saturday.



For my next task I had to work out what to make! I had a pile of fabric beside me, a book of quilting patterns, and another kit - this time to make a bag but I'd already started this and declared it was too hard. I eventually opted to attempt to finish the bag becasue the ide of me having to cut fabric is rather scary! It means I have to commit to something :(

It took me about 30 mins to work out how to get the thread on the bobbin and to then thread the machine. Doesn't help that the instruction book is missing and the pdf I found on the internet wouldn't load past page 13 and I needed 60 something. Never mind, i got there and I was off!

I started at about 3pm and at 3am (yes, I kept sewing until 3am!) I finally had the bag finished. I'm amazingly proud of it.



Sewing with the big sewing machine is actually much easier than with the small one - it made it a much less daunting experience and even the instructions that went with the bag made more sense to me than when I first tried in Feb. The only bit I struggled with was hemming the bag becasue I hard hard handles to avoid and unlike modern machines this old one doesn't have room under the sewing bit to just pull the material around in a circle. Delicate maneuvering was required.

I'm now left with the dilemma of what to do next... I want to make a quilt that's just squares of pink and purple blocks, my sister has requested a quilt that's a bit more complicated but still just squares (how hard can it be?) but I'm also toying with the idea of ordering some random scraps and making a crazy cushion cover. the first 2 actually require me to commit and cut the material. I don't know why I'm scared of it but I am :( I'm also tempted by this quilt. It looks nice and can't be that hard to make?

Hmmm We'll see what happens. If I don't post about quilting for a while can someone poke me to make sure I'm doing it? I'm much more likely to do it again now that I've discovered how to work the proper sewing machine though :)