Saturday at Spring Quilt Break

All right, back to the fun stuff! My Saturday class was Machine Quilting Elegant Borders with Pam Clarke. Pam lives in Spokane. She is a bundle of energy and a wonderfully talented machine quilter. I took her class to get ideas to use on my stand up quilting machine--but others were there to learn how to better quilt on their regular sewing machines. I had my tiny travel sewing machine, a wee Janome, along and let me tell you, that was tough going, trying to free motion quilt on it! I realized the HQ Sixteen has spoiled me! Everyone else did really nice with their samples, but mine...ahhh well, it is best left hidden!

Rather than marking a quilting design on the quilt, Pam's technique is to make "registration marks," so you can free motion and keep things even. It has a lot of potential and I'm very excited to try it out on the HQ. Here is Pam and some of her quilts.








Pam was the luncheon speaker on Saturday, talking about old quilts. She had several to show us and a couple were for sale! I helped carry one of the quilts around the room. Later, folding quilts up and putting them in her suitcase, this one called out to me. It has fabric in it that I remember from a quilt my grandmother made. That quilt my Nana made was the one I always cuddled under on Friday night when I would spend the night at her house. It ended up wrapped around the hot water tank when my sister inherited my grandmother's house. By the time I found out what Marigene did with it, it had experienced a couple of basement floods, as well as being exposed to marijuana smoke from Marigene's children. It was beyond salvaging. This quilt, though, kind of makes up for that loss! It is a different pattern; more complex than the one Nana made, but I still love it. Pam finds a lot of vintage quilts in antique shops and thrift stores and feels we should finish them when such treasures come into our lives. She machine quilted this one and did a lovely job on it. Later a friend told me the pattern is called "Boutonniere."

After lunch when we were back in class, Elise phoned her husband and had him bring their treasured family quilt over to show us.