May 2016 – Amherst Quilters Guild

May 22, 2016

basting your quilts

Hello all, Mary Ellen here. Who does your quilting? Are you one of us who does all of your own quilting because “it’s not your quilt if you pay someone else to quilt it”? (overheard being said by a visitor to our quilt show as she saw the name of a long-armer on the quilt label) Do you do some of your own quilting and hire some of it out? Hand quilting or machine quilting? I enjoy doing the quilting of my projects. I do all of it by machine, some free motion and some walking foot. But what I don’t enjoy about the process is the layering and the basting. Definitely a necessary evil-but evil nevertheless. I do remember crawling around on the floor basting a larger quilt to be done on my domestic machine. And the aches and pains in my knees and back after that adventure are […]

May 8, 2016

what’s in your locker?

Hello all, Mary Ellen here. We should all be recovered from our quilt show by now. So many lovely inspiring quilts. Will I live long enough to make all the quilts I’d like to try? I’m sure that for almost all of us, that answer is no! So which quilt project is next on your list? Although applique is for me almost a four letter word, I admired so many of the quilts which combined piecing with applique. Maybe that will be my next challenge to myself. But I digress. Have you ever tried locker hooking? I did quite a bit of it a few years back and then moved on to another hobby. I do really like the old fashioned look of mats and rugs made with this technique. I happened to get Ami Simms’ newsletter this week in which she gives a very nice tutorial on how to […]