Tracey’s Quilting Quest: Hitting a Snag

Hands up who remembers way back in August last year when I told everyone I was joining the beginner quilting classes with Master quilter Pam Taylor??? 

I had my fabrics chosen and joined Pam’s first session ready to learn the basics and begin making ‘Snowball in the Garden’.  And I hated it! (spoiler alert: I love it now!) 

Pam actually told me my lifetime of sewing might leave me struggling a bit with the slight haphazardness of quilting and she was not wrong! 

During the session Pam was an absolute star in breaking down the process of piecing the smaller squares into blocks and I did manage a block or two by the end of the session, but nowhere near as many as I thought I would when I started. 

One lonely block...

During the session Pam was an absolute star in breaking the process of piecing the smaller squares into blocks and I did manage a block or two by the end of the session, but nowhere near as many as I thought I would when I started. 

Having sewn for many years I assumed the straight stitching of quilting would be easily manageable and it was – but getting my head around putting the squares together was a whole different matter and one that kind of put me off.

I’ve spent my sewing life trying my best to match patterns, to make pieces come together as invisibly as possibly and here was Pam telling me to just place the squares AT RANDOM to create my blocks.  Nope, not happening.  I tried in vain to build a pattern out of these dozens of multi-coloured squares and when it wasn’t working, I felt rather despondent about quilting honestly.

As we were to use our newfound knowledge and skills to continue creating blocks at home, during the session Pam also showed us how to stitch the blocks together to each make our flimsy.  We were ready.

I went home, put my pieces in a bag and left them untouched!

Until Christmas!  During those weird empty days between Christmas and New Year I thought Tracey, you wanted to make a quilt, Pam has taught you what to do, try it Pam’s way – (ick) at random.

Let's try random placement shall we...

And I did it!  With Pam’s advice ringing in my ears, I tried again.  My quilt is Zebras in the Garden rather than Snowballs, so I set my zebra squares out first and then went about randomly adding pieces of my other coloured fabrics.  And then slowly and surely the smaller squares were pieced into blocks and those blocks were turned into a flimsy! 

Taking the time to sew the pieces together took quite a few hours but it was so satisfying.  

There was a point I thought Zebras in the Garden would never be finished but I’m definitely on track now, so here it is so far…

Zebras in the Garden - not yet a quilt but on the way!

I don’t yet have a quilt I need wadding and backing before that’s true, and I of course need to add the quilting stitch on top before it’s officially a quilt – but I know now it will be!

I’ll share a photo once it’s complete but for now in answer to the question I posed last time: How On Earth Does a Non-Quilter Create a Snowball in the Garden – and do they even have a Snowball’s chance of making one as nice as Pam’s?

1.      It can be tricky to try something new and even those of us who have sewn our whole lives might struggle with a project every now and then but remember there are people around whose advice will help.

2.      Yes, we can all make beautiful things – it just might take us a little longer than we originally thought!

If you'd like to join one of Pam's wonderful quilting workshops our next one is on Friday March 7th from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm...quilting IS fun, I promise!