Letter-A-Day: Q

Today's Letter-A-Day Challenge was letter Q. Obviously I had to make a quilt but I have to let you in on a secret. I am not very interested in quilting anymore. I keep saying "This is my last quilt" and then I make another one. I really think this is my last serious art quilt. But I will probably change my mind again. The quilting is hard to show on pictures but here is a detail shot.

I pieced it about a month ago. I had the idea for the quilting and it was a design that I knew I couldn't do myself or if I did it would have looked awful so I asked my friend Sally Terry to quilt it for me in her big nice long arm machine and she set up time off her busy schedule to do it just in time to meet my Q challenge. Seriously, I don't know when she has time to sleep. She is writing a book that comes out in a month, she is revamping her whole website where she is going to have quilting online classes and live chat and live help, she has all these quilts to quilt, she is renovating a house, she is helping her daughter move, she... But she was kind enough to separate two full days just for me. Sally is not your average long arm quilter. She is a nationally certified instructor that travels all over the country, she has written books, won awards, judged quilt shows, etc.. I'm not just going to let just anyone quilt my quilt! Here's a little video of the process



Now I have to explain something about long arms because I know what all of you out there are saying "Well, is easy when the machine automatically does all the work". Not so, my friends. Ok, there are long arm machines that are programmed to do everything automatically and you just press a button and go get some coffee. But that is not the case here or the majority of long arm quilted quilts. It takes a lot of skill, patience, work and thread to use those machines and be good at it. As my friend Caryl said "quilting in a regular sewing machine is like drawing moving the paper instead of the pen, quilting in a long arm machine is like drawing moving the person that is holding the pen." A long arm machine is just a tool like a computer is a tool or a camera is a tool or a paintbrush is a tool. It is up to the person using it to make something beautiful with it. And Sally did.

So for today's challenge I can't actually say I made something. I watched someone make something. Does that count?