Practice, Practice

Those were the words of my violin teacher lo those many years ago: "practice, practice". I didn't do much practicing, and it showed. How motivated is a ten year old who doesn't master the instrument in the first few weeks? After two torturous years, my parents allowed me to quit the violin, since my younger sister was ready to take it up.




But I've learned the benefits of practicing a skill.We are in training in our home, learning to master the skills of quilting for others. Yes, we are new at this, having received our longarm machine a mere seventeen days ago. But it's so motivating -- I think for us both -- to feel we've been gifted with an ability that certainly surprises me.



We have made several muslin "quilt sandwiches", a few smaller patchwork quilts I'd pieced in the past, and some of varying sizes for three local charitable organizations. We now have customers' quilts ready to go. One is huge! It's a beautiful king-sized quilt that I'm intimidated to begin on yet. We need a little more experience for such a giant. Another quilt is a reasonable size, but I don't have the right color of thread, nor am I certain about the quilting design to apply yet. Tomorrow I'll load on another muslin practice piece, and it may become our new bedspread. Roclon unbleached muslin is beautiful, cream colored, smoothly finished, and looks fairly formal when quilted in a light silvery grey thread. (See portion of whole-cloth quilt above.)

Here's my favorite quilter.

Here is some of his quilting.

 This is mine.

I thought our styles would be as different from each others as is our signature, but we seem to have a similar way of filling in spaces with thread.