Sewing Lessons

I'm finally getting around to showing pictures of our quilt progress.  The girls have been taking over a lot more of the responsibilities of their quilts, and Amy and I are backing away more and more.  We just sit with them, tell them what to do, and watch their progress so that they don't do something horribly wrong.

Sami is surprisingly good at using the sewing machine.  Megan is learning patience and sticking with something, even after it gets "boring."  I'm learning to back off and let the girls do their own work, even if it means that it won't be exactly as I envisioned it.

These are pictures of the girls putting their quilt backs together.  The fabric wasn't large enough to cover the entire back, so they are piecing together four big rectangles with a plus-sign in the middle.  Our next sewing lesson will be pinning the quilt top to the batting and back.  

Quilts and Sewing

We are having another sewing lesson with Amy today.  We had a field trip last week to pick out our quilt backs, batting and quilting thread.  I learned a lot just on that trip.  I learned about the different types of batting that are available, and I learned that there are different types of thread available and that to quilt we needed "machine quilting thread." I was amazed that there were so many different types of thread and that they all had a specific purpose. 

Here are pictures of the finished quilt tops and the quilt backs.  The girls picked everything out themselves.  The picture quality isn't good because it was cloudy outside and I had an awful lamp for lighting.

Sami's quilt is very colorful.  The picture doesn't do the bright colors justice, and several colors can't be seen in the picture.  I will retake the picture later when it's not in the back of the car and I'm not in my bathrobe.     

Megan's quilt is still colorful, but is more muted.

And here is mine.

I want to make a quilt for my bed, but it's hard to figure out what to make that is dog and cat hair proof.  It seems silly to make a home-made quilt that will be covered in hair and will need to be washed constantly.  I suppose I could make one out of burlap and dye it.

Quilts and Sewing

The sewing lessons are continuing.  Our next project will be lap-blanket sized quilts made with simple squares and a border. 

We had a field trip Thursday, and Amy took us to a quilting store in Greenwood called Back Door Quilts.  We got to see hundreds of quilting fabrics that were of excellent quality.  I didn't want to spend to much, but it made sense to spend a little extra to get fabric that wasn't going to shrink and warp as we tried to work with it. 

It was very difficult to choose our fabrics, but we all seemed to like the Batik fabrics.  Here is what we chose:

These are Megan's fabrics.  

These are Sami's fabrics.

These are my fabrics.

Even though we all seemed to gravitate towards the Batik fabrics, we all chose different colors.  As soon as I know what I'm doing, I'm going to make a much needed quilt for my bed.  The hard part will be choosing the fabrics since there are so many choices!