Here's my tip, start with a placemat or oven pad, lol
and invest in some of the tools like the wide quilting rulers, cutting mats and rotary cutter and TONS of straight pins. Also it would have been better with my first if I had basted instead of rushing, lol
I didn't have enough pins and it looked like everything was lined up and I started stiching a row together and they weren't, lol hehehe had to start ripping out and redoing, lol
That was the first quilt I ever made...long time ago W/GM
she thought it was funny, I thought it was hilarious...about a week after it happened, hehehehehe

I used to quilt a lot. Used to teach quilting. I made a lot of quilts on commission, made them for all my kids, kinfolks and friends.

I made one for me, can't remember the name for the life of me, but each block had 79 little bitty pieces in it. It was so pretty, red, white, and grey w/ little red flowers in it. I hand quilted it and had it dry cleaned and put it on my bed.

I went to work up at our antique store, and the house burned to the ground while I was gone.

I haven't quilted a thing since, but I do have some DGDs comming up, they will need nice quilts for a hope chest. Maybe I should pull out all those goodies that are still in the sewing room.

LOL, have a wonderful time with your new machines. Quilting is wonderful therapy. Maybe that is what I need!

Janie

My mother quilted, my sister quilted, but I am one of those people who needs to see immediate results - so quilting is not my game. I do love the beauties that are created however, and appreciate all the time that went into making them. Everyone who quilts seems to enjoy it so much. Good luck on your efforts --- may it be relaxing for you.

Most of my friends quilt. Some of them make beautiful quilts.
Be sure and post pictures of your first quilt and keep us updated.

I love quilts. I'm too spazzy to actually make a quilt. I'm hoping when I get older I'll calm down enough to make a quilt. I gotta hit it just right....before my eyes and fingers make it too hard and after I calm down a bit.It's all about timing with quilting!PJ

I have a friend who is a serious quilter. She goes to Houston every Oct. to the big quilt show. If you are near Houston you should go....I have made crib size quilts for my three granddaughters and two quilts I'm not ashamed of but know they are beginner work.Two years ago or longer I started a raggedy quilt and got sort of discouraged and put it away.I really intend to finish it before winter...Your new machine sounds awesome! Good luck.

My one armed mom quilts. So you can too!
My Aunt quilts, she just donated 22 quilts to the Rainbow group, cancer kids, and next year she and her friend plan to make enough for every kid to have one. She's made 17 so far since June. She teaches quilting and works part-time in a quilt shop.
I still have several quilts my grandmoter made.
I can't sew to save my life. I make costumes, thank heavens for glue guns!!
You gotta have something to do inside when it rains too much to be in the garden. Heaven forbid we should clean house!!
Stick to it, we're all rootin' for ya!
Tally HO!

Gabriell.....I've got a pattern coming for a raggedy quilt.
I'm not even going to think of EVER attempting to make some of the beautiful professionally sewn quilts I've seen. I want quilting to be fun & not a chore.
I'm simple minded, so will stick with simple quilting!
I'm sitting here waiting for the UPS man. I checked the tracking and it's in Granbury somwhere on the truck.
This new machine will do a lot of neat stuff & I may need to take classes just to learn how to use it.
Other than the useful notion/tools Jolana mentioned what other gizmos do I need?
I've started lurking on the quilting forum & the sewing forum. So far they seem pretty nice.

Way to go, I wish you sucess in quilting. If you enjoy it then it's doing what you want that makes it all worth while.
I have always wanted to quilt but never got around to it. Now my hands won't let me, holding on to small objects like a needle and the material make my hands go numb and stuff.
I have a quilt one of my great great aunt's quilted. My dad told me she quilted all the time, he never saw her without one in the making.
I have started book scraping, something to do in the winter months, rainy days and those long hot summer months.

Bev, they have quilt piece templates, curved safety pins.
They even have ruler handles that attach to them the rulers, lol
Go to it girl, YOU CAN DO IT !!!

You will LOVE your serger. It makes sewing so much faster and neater seams.

Do you have the cutting mat & rotary cutter?

I love those things.

Just be sure to keep the mat absolutely flat & keep it out of the sun:

One summer, I ruined one.
I had tossed it into the trunk, sort-of flat but not exactly, & then I forgot to take it out as soon as I got to the friend's house where we were going to cut fabric for her curtains.

By the time I remembered, it was brittle from heat & mis-shapen from being "sort-of" flat.

Thanks for all the advice. My serger got damaged in shipping and I'm waiting for the part.
My sewing machine is really wonderful.
I've bought all kinds of helpful tools.
I'm still in the playing with it stage. I've been really busy with other things and haven't had time to get sewing.

Janie.....I can't imagine the horror of having my home burn down. Was this a long time ago? I also can not imagine making a block with that many tiny pieces!

Barb.....get a hand hot wax soaking spa or whatever they are called. When my hands get so painful I think I can't stand it, I heat my wax thingy up and dip my hands in it. It helps a lot. They're not very expensive. Also try Aspercreme instead of hand lotion,it helps too and isn't greasy and doesn't stink. Another thing I use is from elastro gel. Its a hand heat pack. Put in the micro was a couple min. then stick our hand in it...it's wonderful. I have them or my foot& bak too. I ordered them on the internet. My physical therapist recommended them.

Here is a link that might be useful: elasto gel therapy

Bev, what model Babylock did you get? I think that my wife wants the latest machine from them.......which wasn't in stock yet, locally, as of December.

Looking for a report on how the machine works in actual use.

Shelly...I'm on the quilting forum as much as I'm on this one, they're a fun bunch too and very helpful.

Rick...I have the Babylock Quilters Choice (BLQC). I love it. It does almost anything & everything I could possibly want it to do. I got mine barely used for I think it was $480 with all the attatchments.
Now if I was rich I would get one of those fancy Bernina's, but I can't spend thousands on 1 sewing machine
I have an older Pfaff for my quilting frame, but wish I could afford Juki with a longer neck.
I have a serger for faster piecing, but haven't learned to use it yet...I think I'm afraid of it. I was that way with my babylock, took me months to use it, I was afraid I'd break it or be too dumb to figure it out. I'm a wimp when it come to tech stuff.
As was mentioned recently on a recent previous post, I have a sickness with fabric. I can't stop buying it, I have closets, cabinets & totes full of it so I need to get sewing a lot more. I just need to find more time!

Ginny was looking at something over a $1000. I can't remember the name of it, but it was computer capable, and embroidery capapable.

Rick

If DW (that's Mrs. Stitches to me) ever finds this thread, I'm a dead man.
H_ll, I'm already a quilter's widower! Flat broke, too!

I know this is an old thread, but I just found this forum and I do love quilting.

I have a question about a certain machine I just acquired off of Craig's List, and I am wondering if anyone can tell my what list/forum would be appropriate to post my questions in? Thanks!

Have you tried the quilters forum? Great bunch of quilters & very helpful.

Here is a link that might be useful: Garden web quilting forum

I just finished doing a Sunbonnet Sue-Sam quilt top,basted,and got it all ready to Quilt,my problem I don't want to tie and was thinking of stitching in ditch,should I get a part to go on my Kenmore to help with this stitching? I read somewhere not to stitch in ditch when Quilting....why. Advice needed I am new at quilting.

My aunt gave me a beautiful king size quilt for Christmas. It has a heart pattern. Breathtaking! Good thing too as the ex took all my blankets & quilts.
Tally HO!

Hi Bev.......as a quilter for 25 years and an instructor in a local quilt shop for 9 years......I really suggest you take beginners' lessons. It's well worth the expense! How many times I had students that were self-taught and made the same mistakes over and over again. Measurements as well as being "exact" when you cut and sew are extremely important as is "squaring up" a quilt!!! Or else your quilt will be, what we call in the quilting world, "waving" at you!! Anyway, hope you get the quilting bug and join all of us "stashers"....LOLOL

I am new to sewing and have a question... I am able to purchase a Pfaff Hobbylock Serger - Model 794 for
$75. I think that this is an AWESOME deal. The gal that has it says it is basically brand new and was used by an advanced sewer...

What do you ladies think?

Finchlover, the only reason for not quilting in the ditch is that you won't be able to see your quilting stitches. If you're quilting with a machine it doesn't matter because they will all be the same size anyway. If you quilt by hand and have beautiful, neat, even, tiny quilting stitches, you wouldn't do them justice by hiding them in the ditch. You'd want to show them off by stitching a fancy pattern on the face of the quilt.

I've been quilting for about 36 years, not sure how many I've made during that time, maybe 35 or 40. Some larger some smaller, some machine pieced and hand quilted, some all handmade. Made a few embroidered tops and hand quilted. I've only made one quilt that was machine quilted and I did quilt in the ditch. I made it about 20 years ago and I'm still using it. Made a few whole cloth quilts, small ones for babies, pink, yellow, blue, lavender, that had tons of quilting on them.

I use a lap hoop to do the quilting and generally hand piece the tops. Haven't done an applique top in a long time, but I've been thinking about a cute butterfly pattern I saw recently on e-Bay I'd like to try. I confess I have several tops that need to be quilted, but since I use a lap hoop, I really do need cold weather to do them.

My current project is a yo-yo quilt, which isn't really a quilt at all, but it takes a real long time to make and uses a lot of different fabrics and requires a lot of hand sewing. I just finished cutting out 4000 2" squares for a postage stamp quilt and I have a sack of 2" x 45" strips to piece together and cut out a four pointed star quilt top. Lastly, I'm still in the gathering stage of a silk quilt using men's silk neck ties. I have collected about 50 ties, taken out the stitching and facings and have the fabric neatly waiting until I have enough to start piecing. I figure for a nice sized quilt that's suitable for display I'll need about 250 ties. Using all the silk, I'll stabilize it with fusable interfacing, join the bits into thirty 12" squares, Then sew the squares together. The best part of the silk crazy quilt is the embroidery on each seam embellishing it and giving it character and charm. I made a small one (45" X 56")for my mom years ago and it was so much fun.

If you find that you love quilting, you'll be hooked for life. In 1976 I was in the Navy and had a mid watch at the women's barracks. When I walked into the watch office the woman on duty was piecing a postage stamp quilt. She had a grocery sack full of tiny squares and several completed blocks. It hit me like a cold shower. When I got off watch the next morning I went home and cut up a bunch of old clothes, some tablecloths, several of my husband's shirts (he was overseas at the time) and I started quilting that day. Since then I've never lost the bug.

I agree with bellaroma you should take a beginners class. It's better than teaching yourself and making all the mistakes that will cost you time and money and could ruin your drive to continue quilting. Learn the basics first.
Cheryl

P.S. I just scored a major stash of quilting fabrics at an estate sale. I got about 50 yards of various cotton quilting fabrics for $6. The lady was a quilter and had her stash separated into color groups, so I just scooped them out of her handy bins and into my shopping sack. Lord rest her dear soul, she had the biggest stash I've ever seen so I guess she was the winner.

I used to quilt but I have been cured.........by gardening. Now I am really sick.