Friday, April 06, 2007

HARRIET AND ME

I have spent the past 2 days in a workshop with Harriet Hargrave. I have always said that you can only know so many things about machine quilting and the rest is practice. Taking the class with Harriet confirmed this. She is the best machine quilting teacher that I ever had. She is no nonsense, she doesn't coddle her students. Like she says "no whining, you can do this". She has strong opinions about threads, battings, and fabrics and she has extensive knowledge on the subjects, and you can tell because she remembers everything about them and can answer any question that came up concerning quality etc. She has given me a whole new respect for nylon thread. I had bought into all of the uninformed horror stories about it and I gave mine away. But she had quilts that had been quilted with nylon and had been washed almost a hundred times and they were still beautiful. Stories about nylon thread are taken out of context, she said. Stories about nylon fishing line that is brittle.. but has been exposed to the sun. If you left your quilt out in the sun it would lose color and the fabric would probably go before the thread. She says that todays fabrics can lose color within a couple of days if left out in the sun. Something to think about before I put another quilt in our local outdoor quilt show. she had a specific time frame of course, but I don't remember..
I learned so much. the biggest things are.. I DON"T need a long arm machine to machine quilt. I need to practice, practice, practice. Practice on all of the tops that I have put away, practice on quilts for charity or gifts. "A lot of mediocre quilting is better than a little bit of mediocre quilting" She was right about that!

3 comments:

Dorothy said...

If that quilting above is your work, then everything Harriet taught you stuck. It's gorgeous! I like the "mediocre" quote. Wise words.

Rian said...

Informative post. I too like the "mediocre" quote. I have used nylon thread for years and never had a problem with it. But I've worried, so good to get that positive input.

Debra Dixon said...

Yea, but I don't want to practice!

(The QS webring could use another machine quilter for our service quilts if you need practice.)