All I can say right now is "drat"! I came here looking for ideas for surface design and dyeing, and now I (person who has always loathed sewing) want to make a quilt! You must be contageous or something....
I am also thinking I want to do something by hand first.... Are crazy quilts the easiest? Any good links for total newbies? Hmmmm. I'd better go look at the FAQ if there is one. I have been looking at eye candy--and at more practical things like about.quilting....
I don't know whether to close with a smile or a frown. Time will tell....
Welcome, Jean! We love being contagious! LOL! As for hand work, you can do any quilt that way (crazy quilts aren't my thing, but they're truly masterpieces). I'm currently in love with Linda Franz's Quilted Diamonds () and am doing them entirely by hand. She puts out a wonderful DVD explaining the entire process. HTH!
Hi Jean. Welcome to the cyber quilt frame. Lots of good information can be gleaned from the ladies here if you bribe them properly. That means Chocolate or fabric or more chocolate or even more fabric. Sit down and take a load off and pass the chocolate. You do have chocolate right? ;-)
hee hee hee... yup contagious and enablers to boot! lol.... Welcome!
dunno if crazy quilts are easiest but they are fun! there are a lot of simple patterns with striking results. Irish chain, Snowball, yellow brick road, etc. ad nauseum
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i keep the faqs on my site. They won't tell you as much about making quilts as about the terms we talk about here.
if you have days to look for patterns and drool go here
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you have months go here
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and there are lots of other places such as the websites of the ppl here! have fun! ask lots of questions, show us pics on your website and welcome again!
This link will get you to *everything* you ever wanted to know about quilting and then some. Plan to spend an afternoon (or longer!) checking out all the info on this website...
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Good luck, have fun, and hang around here. We'll always answer any question- and debate the merits- any time you need some info! ;-)
And WELCOME to r.c.t.q.!!!
Leslie & The Furbabies > All I can say right now is "drat"! I came here looking for
I still count myself a relative "newbie" - I think I'm coming up on my
4th year since my "quilting for dummies" introduction class (but I'm over-busy and don't work on quilts NEARLY as much as I want).
I don't know if crazy quilts would be "easiest", but maybe they're different if you hand-piece. I've pondered some but can see getting myself into weird situations where I have an off-kilter triangle to try to fit in to a block and I"m really not good at turning a corner while stitching.
For really easy, and quick gratification, try ANYTHING just involving squares. I just whipped up a couple tops for baby quilts that alternated 4-patch and 1-patch pieces, but if you do that with fun batiks and fiddle with the colour placement you can get neat effects for nothing but straight-line sewing.
For a ton of ideas and some reasonably good instructions for block designs, I think someone already suggested Quilterscache.
If you're the sort who likes books - well, there are many here who have many more than I, but my first teach recommended the "Quilts from the Quiltmaker's Gift" books - there are two - and I LOVE them. They are full of 39 traditional patterns ranging from drop-dead easy to moderately complex but still repeating geometries. The books include lots of good technique advice, along with a primer on the "math of quilting" and they're full of fun stories of all kinds of real-world quilters. I've also bought the children's book "The Quiltmaker's Gift" over and over again for friends' kids.
I am also someone who loves going to a good workshop. Not every teacher is brilliant, and I've been lucky to find a few who are, but every one of them has some personal wisdom that you just won't get by trial and error (or maybe you would, but after ALOT of trial and error). A one-day class in my area will run about $50-$70, and is enough to teach you the basics of EITHER cutting/piecing OR quilting, I find.
Good luck with your new affliction... er, ummm, "hobby", yah that's it...
Easiest by hand: cut some fabric squares, all the same size. Sew 2 of them together: you have a pair. Sew 2 more of them together: another pair. Sew the pairs together: you have a 4-patch. See how easy that was? Repeat. Let the fabric make it fun & interesting for a 4-patch. When you get them all put together, then you move on to another pattern, a 9-patch, playing w/ triangles, curves--really, curves are not difficult. Crazy quilting, tho', could be a bigger challenge for a first quilt. Or not. ;-)
Good luck! And Welcome, Jean B!!
Ragm> All I can say right now is "drat"! I came here looking for
I too, would like to say welcome, even though I am a newbie myself. I have not sewn the first square together but am trying to get ready to do so. I can't wait this is something I have always wanted to do and I am going to do it even if it kills me. Well, I don't think it will kill me but I am going to do it.
Again, Welcome,
Jacquel>All I can say right now is "drat"! I came here looking for
I started out to make a Cathedral Window quilt from a magazine article that showed ONE cathedral window panel about 16" square made up as a cushion. I - in blissful ignorance - assumed that I could reduce the block, pad the inserts and make a quilt the size of a KS bedspread in just a couple of weekends.
Over 30years on I still have the unfinished quilt with me. It has travelled all over the country and I kept it to teach myself to "look before I leap" (It didn't work LOL). I chose a very small scale to work on, bought polyester fabric in a very dark colour (hard to work at night) and never factored the extra work involved in making over 240 tiny little cushions for inserts ROFLMAO
My advice to any newbie would be - start small and simple with good quality fabrics (cotton preferably), batting and threads - and finish it! Learn the basics and all the "rules" - which you can then disregard at will of course, but at least not thru ignorance.
Welcome, Jean. The bad news - it's incurable. The good news - it's life enhancing and most enjoyable (though it can be frustrating!)
As to a crazy quilt: I honestly wouldn't suggest that you do one for your first quilt - unless you are 'vowed and determined' to do so! The techniques are so different from the vast majority of quilts that you might do. Also, I would suggest that you start with something smaller than a bed-sized quilt. If you make something useful - like place mats and/or a table runner, you will be learning 'how to do' without having most of the snags of weight and sheer size. And, if you were sure you wanted to do 'crazy', these would be manageable. With Christmas not *too* far away, perhaps a Christmas set of mats and runner would be fun. If you didn't manage it by *this* Christmas, there's always another one round the corner >gbetter go look at the FAQ if there is one. I have been looking at eye
Yes, we are very contagious. I came looking for the name of a block, now I make quilts.
That depends. Do you feel you need a pattern, or would you like to fly by the seat of your pants and make it up as you go along? Although there are crazy patch patterns online, they aren't the way traditional crazy patches were made. Crazy quilting is a very free form kind of thing. Cut up some scraps in various colors, put them in a bag or bin and mix them together, cut paper or muslin for a background the size you want your block to be, sew the fabric scraps to the background until the background is covered, trim the edges of the block and you are done with you first block. You might want to add surface embroidery stitches over the edges of all the seams of the block and that can be done by hand or machine.
Another easy by hand block type is applique. There are a lot of applique block patterns online covering almost every possible theme from alligators to zinnia flowers. An easy butterfly pattern is on this web page:
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Some quilt blocks here:
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quilting links to explore
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cats and quilts here, including how to pet-proof your sewing space
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Our FAQ is posted once a month, unfortunately I don't have a link to the online site.
Pick a small project first. A table runner or placemats, baby quilt, lap quilt, or a simple wall hanging will be big enough that you can decide if you enjoy quilting while being small enough that you can finish the project fairly quickly. You could even make a four block sampler with each block made using a different method to find which technique you enjoy doing the most; crazy patch, applique, traditional piecing, and paper piecing.
My first two projects were simple and I've included a link to the webshots pictures in my signature line if you would like to see them. The wall hanging was machine strip pieced with an applique boat added to it. The applique and quilting were done by hand. Debra in VA See my quilts at
Easy depends on what you like to do. How natural is embroidery for you? Crazy quilts have fabric tossed on willy-nilly and embroidered over and decorated. If this style is wonderful for your frame of reference of what you like to do, well jump in!
If your focus is "surface design", think about the fabric of a quilt as yet another surface to design. You can fold the fabrics like paper, add textures with rips of fabric, beads, embroidery, and if you don't want to wash the finished piece, glue or attach other items. Weave fabric strips (with finished edges or no). Tie knots in strips. But remember, the heavier the stuff you put on the front, the sturdier the backing will need to be/heavily quilted or other stabilizer. You can also do prairie points or other textural fabric techniques.
Think about purpose of the finished object- for the wall as Art, or a lap quilt. Do you want to snuggle into it or have a picnic on it? These answers will affect your finished quilt.
You may even like the textured surface of a Cathedral Windows quilt.
Welcome Jean! You can keep on dyeing, makes for great quilts. Would be interesting to use hand-dyes in a crazy quilt... Ever hand-dye velvets or other textured fabric?
I've only done crazies on the machine, so can't answer your question. They were super-easy on the machine though. I do one now and then to cull the scrap basket. Roberta in D, Queen of the Scrap Heap
"Jean B." schrieb im Newsbeitrag news: snipped-for-privacy@individual.net...
Oh, you guys are bad! First making me think I want to make a quilt, and now being just so darned nice. :-) There's no way I can reply to y'all, so please don't be dismayed if I don't reply to any particular message. I'm going to try to sit on my hand. :-) So this will have to suffice for a several messages I think.
Not my chocolate!!!! I have a chocolate stash.... DARK chocolate.... I'm a chocoholic.... It will take a while to accrue nice cloth though. I did just pick up the last supplies to try out the methods in "Color by Accidental", so we'll see what happens. (Since everything I read said one should use a mask when dyeing, I decided to take that advice.)
Oh, thank you for the link, and the suggestions re easy quilts. I was also thinking it would be wise to start small.... Gee, I have to put together ... a square.... Are there other total newbies here?
Eeek! I already collect cookbooks and am being run out of house and home by them. I think I need to get organized.... How many of you have good spaces to quilt in? I don't have an extra room, alas, and am planning on commandeering part of the livingroom.
I'm going to have to save all of these great suggestions (alluding to yours and those from others). Thanks!
Uh, some of the gorgeous things I've seen online involve curves, and I can't figure out how on earth one would do that, given the hem issue.
Yeah, even *I* could sew squares together (and I assume this means hemmed squares). Question in general: do folks here tend to be for or against prewashing the fabric? Do y'all test religiously for bleeding?
One reason why I am thinking I want to do this by hand is that that's what folks did before the advent of sewing machines. I was thinking of buying a treadle machine, but I have refrained from doing so thus far. When I think of more-modern sewine machines, I think they run away with you.... Silly, huh? But I may not have sewn anything since I was in home ec, and that would have been more than 40 years ago. Ack!
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