Thursday, December 9, 2010

Strip Quilt, my way...

I've been spending many hours over the past few days doing the quilting on one of my quilts, and, frankly, my dear, I'm bloody sick of it. So today I said to myself, "Self... let's do something quick and put the quilting on hold for a few days." Since I can't seem to stop buying African fabrics, in spite of the fact that I have more than I'll ever use, I decided to rip through that section of my stash and blow a few away. Some of my quilting friends have lately been having fun doing Strip Quilts... it's a great way to put a hole in your stash, but I'm not too crazy about the "traditional" kind of strip quilt. Sooooo, I'm going to do my own version using some of my overstock of African fabrics. I pulled these out of the mix today, but will probably use many more before I'm done. I just love African fabrics... all that color... it makes me happy!


Back in 1993 I bought some African fabrics at a quilt show, then didn't have a clue about how to use them. Enter Roberta Horton, who had just returned from a fabulous fabric safari to Africa, and was all revved up to teach a class on making quilts with African Fabrics. I took the class - four days of pure bliss - and have been in love with African fabrics ever since. In 2000 I got a further super-charge at PIQF from Lee Hackman, African Quilter Extraordinaire, who changed my life and quilting style and I've never looked back.


I absolutely LOVE this fabric, so much so that many years ago I bought five yards of it and have used it in practically every quilt I've made since then. This piece is all I have left... about fifteen inches square, I'm going to use it up in this new quilt. It'll have a place of honor, and I've even left the printed selvedge label on.

I spent several enjoyable hours working on this new piece today, but my $%#@*&?!! sewing machine crapped out on me again so I had to stop. I guess I'm in for another trip to the machine shop on Monday. Probably another 200 bucks as well. Feh!

3 comments:

Healing Woman said...

I have to circle my machine before I use it each time..sort of like an animal getting ready to attack it's prey..I nervously approach and finally I do sit down to sew. There is always some kind of problem..I certainly can sympathize with you.

How wonderful to be able to work with the authentic African fabrics..

Molly said...

I love LOVE your African fabrics too. There is no such thing as too much color IMO. As for Sewing machines ... what a relief to know that the professionals have issues with them as well. Just one tiny project to finish the other day on my machine ended in a knot of thread all balled up somewhere in the nether regions of the damn thing. I did not take a sledge hammer to it, but it was a near thing.

Sue Dennis said...

You have a wonderful stash of African fabric- makes my small amount look very pathetic. Would it be better to put the $200 into a new machine?