A Christmas Beginning

We pulled out the Christmas decorations this week and I was reminded of where I started as a quilter and how far I have come.  

• In the 1970's - I Tied quilts - it was all I knew and it was quick and easy work!  (I was very young)
• Early 1980's - I learned to hand quilt and hand piece.  I struggled and it took an eternity to finish a project.
• Late 1980's -  I had moved on to machine piecing and heard about machine quilting. I gave it a try.  No lessons.  I was terrible.  I didn't know to baste A LOT and I used polyester fluffy batting. Yikes.
• 1990's - I went back to tying or more often than not - no quilting projects at all.  It was a time of tole painting and making clothing for the kid-a-lees.   It was cheap to make clothing then.
• In the early 2000's I joined a local quilt guild at the urging of my friend, Lorraine.  The ladies were kind and so willing to share their knowledge with poor little me. Little did I realize they would open a whole new world to me!

One of my first projects after I joined the group was one of the Christmas decorations I pulled out this past weekend:

I believe I was still buying fabrics at the big box store at this time.

I'm not sure what fusible I was using but it didn't stick very well and my scissors weren't very sharp either.

My blanket stitch was horrible!  It looks like it was made by a 5 year old. 

I was also still using muslin for the backing of my projects.  I only used pretty fabrics on the back of baby quilts.  I don't know why I didn't carry it over to other projects.

The quilting isn't too bad - fairly even stitches but done with regular sewing thread.  Not sure if I can quilt any better now as I haven't been practicing much since I discovered machine quilting.  

Two of the things I am still doing:

I still leave relatively large areas unquilted, much to the chagrin of the quilt police.

And I still prefer not making a quilt label.

When a project is done, I am so done and don't want to do one more thing to it.  My mind has left the project far behind and is on to the next two projects. . .

. . .so I  just sign the fabric!

I used a Pigma pen to sign my quilts until I discovered the Pentel Fabric Gel Pen.  Best pen in the whole wide world to write on fabric with!  It glides like butter!

You should really try it.

And honestly no one paid me to say that!

I just LOVE the product.

And I almost forgot!  I'm linking this post up to the Christmas Quilt Show.  You should really hop on over through this link to see all the other beautiful Christmas quilts!