How I came to Quilt
It was a cold winter’s day – no, no, no. That sounds like almost any book, doesn’t it? I’m now going to tell you how it is that I came to quilt. I remember living in Philadelphia, in my townhouse. I wanted to make a quilt for my guest bedroom. I mean, I was this all-time sewing queen in my head, and I could sew anything. Right? Wrong! I got the type of cloth, color, and size fabric I wanted, the batting and backing I desired. I put all three together, put it on my sewing machine with pins, and started sewing. Yikes! A mess. The fabric was slipping all over the place. Nothing worked. It looked so easy when others did it. What went wrong? I had no time to read nor take classes, so the project was ditched. For about 10 years or even more. Fade out.
Now I was married, living in Wisconsin amongst the mothers and babies, farmers and six feet of snow. What was I to do! I was retired. Time to really learn to quilt. No more court. No more judges, lawyers and whatever. I got a book and taught myself the art of quilting. I made my first quilt with doggies on it for my best friend. It turned out great! Then one for each of my seven grand nieces and nephews for that xmas. I was on a roll. I found it to be an art. One for dad, one for mom, one for my aunt – on and on it went.
Day and night, night, and day I quilted. I was addicted. I couldn’t stop reading about it either. You couldn’t keep me out of fabric shops near Milwaukee. It was so much fun. What else could I do? Oh, I started scoping too – that’s editing transcripts for a court reporter friend via the internet. So, I had a side income also. I needed it to buy fabric. What else? This was becoming expensive, folks!
After a couple of years, we moved back to Arizona, and I sold my long arm sewing machine before moving. Here near Phoenix, I started making purses, bags, and totes. I would quilt the fabric first and then make these items. Then I was making sun hats and clothing. I would applique fabric, embroider them, then sew on beads, crystals, buttons, and even paint onto the fabric after the item was made. We bought a small trailer, and we would go out on long weekends to art fairs. I had well over 100 items to offer. It was so much fun.
It was at one of these art fairs when I first met the author who I questioned about my writing dad’s WWII book. Little by little my quilting slowed and finally stopped, except for a gift here and there. Funny, I made a wedding gift for the child I made one of my first quilts. The years flew by. I made wall murals years ago at first for my own home, Asian-themed ones, and even a push pin board near my computer with a quilted fabric mural on top of it. Then I made three UFO murals. They are for sale and will be on my LTADesigns link here soon. It’s under construction. I lost that Go-Daddy website when I had my back surgery seven years ago and couldn’t keep it up. That’s when my quilting slowed down and my writing increased and my sad poems, my WWII Chain Letter Gang book research continued, and I survived. I survived.
I sure hope after my books are published (high hopes here) – they say (whoever “they” is or are) that once you get the writing bug, you are never done — that I’ll be able to quilt again. I really, really do want to. The other day my girlfriend came over to help me clear up some storage space by getting rid of a lot of fabric stash. It was like that TV show Hoarders. But that’s for a blog and I’ll tell you later. I can’t get rid of too much if I want to quilt again. Between and betwixt, age and ability, they, again, say.