About This Site

This page originally appeared on ConfoundedByQuilting.com.

August 8, 2009

“Aren’t you a little young to express an interest in fabric-based hobbies?” my friend, George, wrote on my Facebook page the other day, after I’d remarked on wanting to take up quilting. My age notwithstanding, there are plenty of reasons not to do this.

I don’t know how to sew.

I don’t know a selvedge from a baste.

I am more comfortable operating a motorcycle than a sewing machine, I am not good at math, measuring or precise cutting. I find meticulous work frustrating. Thus, naturally, I’m about to undertake this ridiculously meticulous, precise series of projects requiring basic math.

What the hell am I thinking?

I don’t know – I’m in the grips of an obsession.

As a little girl, I played more with Tonka trucks and Legos than with Barbies and my Easy-Bake Oven. My mom didn’t teach me a great deal about homemaking. I’m a 38-year-old girl who doesn’t know the first thing about domesticity.

My boyfriend and I recently bought a house, though, and I suddenly find myself consumed with these nesting urges, including a wholly surprising, completely overwhelming desire to make attractive, warm, homey quilts. I envisioned myself quietly hand-stitching  lovely patches of fabric, perhaps in a rocking chair by the fire, patiently doing whatever it is quilting requires one do. Ok, in between climbing trees and playing with Tonka trucks, I also avidly read every Laura Ingalls Wilder book.  While I always identified more strongly with Laura and Pa than with Mary and Ma, I did admire Ma’s quiet dignity and domestic capability. Maybe I’ll even learn how to darn socks someday.

For better or for worse, I got talked into machine stitching, which is an entirely other thing altogether. Or so I believe. I figure I can always switch to hand-piecing if I hate the machine.

Could be I just threw away nearly $500 on a new hobby that will fall by the wayside in a few months. But I’m going to write about the process here.

I am not sitting on the other side of the mountain, having successfully crested it despite many obstacles, now sharing my wisdom with you. No, not at all. I’m just getting started, learning the lingo, still entirely amok, overwhelmed and absolutely terrified. Any advice I offer or wisdom I profess to have – question it.

I’m more drawn to the classic quilt designs than the modern. Once I get the basic sewing learning out of the way, I’m going to try a lover’s knot or log cabin block. Wish me luck.

I’ve noticed it’s hard to find a website that well and truly schools a newbie from the ground up. I’ll post them as I find them.

The first post for this blog is here. That’s where I started. I wonder where I’ll be when you read this?

Addendum 12/2009:

While this initially started out as purely a quilting and/or sewing blog, it’s become more than that as my interests grow and expand. I do tend to try to keep out the absolutely unrelated stuff as much as possible, but there are an increasing number of posts about chickens, gardening, homesteading and so forth. Since an abundance of quilters are also into some of those things, I reckon they fit in to a certain extent.

1 Comment

• Chai Chai says:

  February 1, 2011 at 7:38 pm

  I have also read all the Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books and also watched the TV series, classics one and all.