It's Sew (not) Easy!

During the first week of my course, the annual Kutztown Folk Festival was occurring across the street where one could browse stand after stand of handmade items and food, most created using very time-tested  traditional techniques.  Before we could begin making an art quilt, Barbara Schulman instructed us to walk across the street to the Quilt Barn and check out the more traditional expression of the art of quilt making.

quilting fabrics

For me, it was as if I had stepped backward in time. I spent most of my teen-labor years working in a Mennonite run quilt shop called Hayloft Fabrics which overlooks Martin's Country Market in Morgantown, PA.    At one time I knew how much yardage of 45" cloth it would take to back a queen sized quilt, how much was needed to make the binding, what 1/4 of $3.79 equaled,  along with other various quilt trivia. All lost over the last twenty years as my limited fiber attention span flitted from this to that.

One side of the Quilt Barn.

The Quilt barn brought back some of those memories as I looked at Lone Stars, Log Cabins, Flying Geese, among others.  While some were hand quilted, and others machine stitched, seeing them all on display in one large area created a visually stimulating assortment of colors and fabrics.  Nostalgia filled my lungs as I took a deep breath and sighed. Wasn't it only yesterday I was a kid wielding scissors, and straightening bolts of fabric? 





The following day, we cleaned up the room, eradicating all traces of screen printing.  After which, we had to set up our sewing machines and work spaces.  Now, it was time to get down to business.

The studio

Making patches

  First, Barbara demonstrated how to piece a simple patchwork block.  For those of you who quilt, this might not be a huge dealio. For me, it was a revelation. I don't know why I never learned to sew strips and then cut those down with a rotary cutter.  Then to re-piece them as rows of squares, seemed pure genius!  Not only that, it had never occurred to me to even try something like this. Quilting, despite my misbegotten youth, has always been some what mysterious to me. I reveled in having the mystery unraveling before my very eyes.

Machine stitched applique

Next came applique, a technique that allows a quilter to attach fabric shapes to the front of their quilt. When I worked at the shop, I vaguely remember learning to attach the appliques to the quilt top using tiny hand stitches, while turning under the 1/8-1/4" seam as I worked my way around the edge of the shape.  In this class, I learned a really clever trick using light interfacing to turn the edges under.  Yes, indeed,  it was one revelation after another for this fiber artist. 

I used to live by this stuff to make custom patches for my jeans.

Last, we learned about products such as Heat and Bond,  a product that allows a anyone to attach fabric to fabric, much like a patch one would buy to fix a hole in a pair of jeans.  The product is ironed on to the back of the material, after which, the sewer can cut out any shape imaginable. Peel off the paper backing, and then iron the shape onto another piece of cloth. It's that easy.  Finally, it was time to put all these methods into action and play!  I put two pieces of material together and just began running my machine stitches all over the front, trying to get the feel of my machine.


Now, I have two confessions to make: one, I am a partially self-taught seamstress.  Rebekah (my mother) taught me the basics, and taught me well. But for whatever reason, probably my overflowing over-commited teenager schedule, we never moved beyond those basics.   So, the rest of my sewing knowledge has come from me doing whatever worked, and most of the time, it's probably been the wrong way to work. Confession Number Two:  I've owned my machine for twenty years, at least, and I learned how to operate it better in one week of classes than I ever did in all the years I've owned it.  I'm almost embarrassed to admit it.  What did I learn? Well, for one, I found out my feed dogs can be dropped.

Inside Don Kauffman's Sewing Machines

I get my machine maintenanced and repaired at Don Kauffman's Sewing Machines in Temple, PA.   On one of my many "how on earth do I work my machine" visits during the Art Quilting portion of the course, I asked if I could buy a free-motion presser foot for the machine.
"Do your feed dogs drop?"
"I don't think so," I said.
"Well, is it a free-arm machine?" he asked
"Um, I don't think so, " I repeated.
"Can you take something off or drop something down on your machine to help you sew pant legs?" He asked.
"Oh HEY! I CAN do that!" I said.
"That's a free-arm machine," he said, patiently.

I probably turned twenty shades of crimson. So this is the second thing I learned: what exactly is a free armed machine.  I had never known. Now I do, and I feel smarter armed with this information.

feed dogs

"So if you have a free-arm machine, you most likely have a lever or a switch in the back that will drop your feed dogs," he told me.

I could hardly wait to get back to class. I HAD to see if my feed dogs dropped. Lo and Behold, with great rejoicing and angelic music ringing through my head, I found the switch and dropped my feed dogs.  I did a poor imitation of the butter churn, and might have danced a little off-rhythym jig.  Just maybe.

 Why did this excite me so much? Because I was no longer constrained to straight lines, corners, and gentle curves.  The feed dogs are the metal 'tracks' on the bottom of the machine that feeds the cloth through while the needle jumps up and down. They keep the stitches even, and the fabric moving.  Why would I want to drop the feed dogs? Because if I want to do any kind of free-form stitching, it's necessary to take away the mechanism that controls the movement of the material. I want to control the fabric.

free-motion foot

So I attached my new free-motion foot and stuck a sample quilt block I was using for practice under the foot and went crazy. I mean really really crazy.  WOWZERS! I mean, this was super-duper-looper exciting!   Literally. I could make loops.  Lots and lots of loops.  I gained a greater appreciation for people who make amazing free-form stitched quilts.  It's not nearly as easy as one would think to make the stitches even. After all, there are no feed dogs to push the quilt through at regular intervals. I mostly made scribble-y messes with my stitches. OH, but it was fun, as in, insanely gleeful, mad-scientist-fun.


Now came the hardest part of the course. What, of my lovely hand-made fabrics was I willing to cut into? Oh the heart-wrenching decisions. How could I willingly hack into one of my precious pieces of printed cloth?  But that's another post for another day...

~melanie