I first learned to quilt from my paternal grandmother. Back in those days you either knew someone or could manage with books, usually from the library.
I was very lucky. My interest in fiber arts was encouraged by my elders. These interests are many and varied, including knitting, sewing, embroidery, weaving, and crocheting. It was always nice having someone to ask advice or a little hands-on assistance. I was never afraid to try figuring ‘it’ out myself, thanks, in no small part, to their ‘can do’ perspective.
The last couple years my mother and I have been working together on BOMs (Block of the Month). It’s been a really fun activity for us. We share our excitement over the new block/project, encourage each other to finish, and, best of all, have someone to talk to when you meet a roadblock, need encouragement, or are confused by the instructions.
The first one was table runner kits from an online quilt shop. This series was 12 different pieced table runners or toppers and included the pattern, and all the fabrics for the top, back and binding. Of the 12 there was only 1 I won’t finish, which is a pretty good percentage, in my experience. I donated the kit as a door prize for my aunt’s quilt guild. I’m sure someone out there will love it. You can see those we finished posted here as I get them quilted on the new longarm.
The shop didn’t offer a table topper BOM again so we found a Murder Mystery BOM quilt project. It came with a chapter a month mystery story, but didn’t include the fabric so we had the opportunity to customize our blocks from our very generous fabric stash. I didn’t do as well at finishing these blocks as my mother did, but we had a lot of conversation about the blocks and the story. Part of my issue with this program is that it was a community project and the community was nearly all on Facebook, which I abhor (my issues with FB go back to the early 2010s, but that’s a story for another venue). There were discussion of the who-dun-it and prizes for finishing the blocks, which I would have really enjoyed. But all this was done on FB and so I was shut out. The completed quilt top was nice (mother finished her’s and I am looking forward to quilting it for her) and the designer has a great website. This year’s offering looks interesting. If you don’t mind using Facebook I recommend looking into joining this BOM. It’s too bad there wasn’t some other way/place for the community aspects to be enjoyed.
This year mother and I are working on the Tara BOM. We are getting our blocks from Connecting Threads. We just received Block 5. I’m a couple blocks behind, because I’m in the middle of moving my sewing room and it’s still a mess across two floors of my house. But I hope to get caught up before Block 6 arrives in March.
My mother often commented about how much she was learning about making the blocks from the designer’s block directions. We often discussed the new to us techniques and how they made getting the blocks together correctly. Seams and points came together with so much less effort that we were used to needing. This got me thinking about how much information is available to us and the quantity and quality of the many learn to do source available to us these days. I stalk a lot of tutorial blogs and websites. How much valuable information did I miss because I was lucky enough to have family teachers and because I started this journey so many years ago?
At the library (I love libraries!) I found a how to series: Quilter’s Academy ( the link goes to the first book in the series). It looks interesting and so I purchased the first three. I plan to work through the books and post my review, by chapter, here. I also plan to include links to a variety of tutorials and other information from around the web that I find is useful and relevant to the information presented in the chapter. I hope to learn a lot of useful information, improve my quilting, and I hope someone out there will also learn something from my journey.
I hope you’ll join me!
I have no affiliation with the links presented in this post.