Quilters Have To Quilt

I was really surprised today to read on Rayna's blog that the act of quilting is daunting for her -- and even more surprised to read the comments to her post there that so many other art quilters feel the same way! Wow, I thought it was just because I'm such a newbit at art quilting, that I've been filled with trepidation at the thought of actually quilting a piece of fabric that I've designed!

But interestingly, quilting has been on my mind too recently, as I'm starting to have pieces to finish off that need to be quilted. So Rayna's post was timely, indeed. I just received "Machine Quilting Made Easy," by Maurine Noble, and late this afternoon made myself a stack of 14 x 14" pieces of fabric and batting so I can do all the exercises in the book.

Rather than use plain muslin, as Maurine suggests, I decided to forego buying more fabric and go through the stash I've been accumulating over the past years. Now that I'm painting/printing my own fabric, it's unlikely I'd use some of that stuff for art quilts, so I may as well use it now. Going through your stash is always fun, especially coming across pieces of fabric that you can't for the life of you figure out why you bought in the first place. I had quite a few of those. But I cut up some good stuff, too. I mean, why not?

Actually, my plan is to use these quilting practice blocks as starting points for possible further work. So I may as well use the good stuff. It's like using the good china just because you have it. Lord knows I've saved other good stuff for so long in some cases, that it either fell apart of its own accord or I completely lost interest in it by the time I found it again, yet here I'd schlepped it around as though it were sacrosanct! Anyway, so I'm planning to do some quilting here real soon.

In news of the loom, I made a new warp yesterday, but didn't have quite enough of the 60/2 silk thread I used to make 600 ends. So now I have a 524 end, 7 yard very fine silk warp to use in future. Today I wound nearly all of a new 20/2 fine cotton warp that I hope I'll be able to tie on to those threaded linen ends by the end of the weekend. I really am hankering to weave again.