Introduction

This being my first blog entry, perhaps I ought to introduce myself. I have been quilting since 1996. I caught the quilting bug from this wonderful shop owner Judy. I took my first quilting class in mid 1995 at Yankee Pride, which used to be in Winooski, VT. The quilt was to be a carpenter wheel. What a disaster that turned out to be, from the use of directional fabric to not enough fabric due to wrong cutting instructions. The teacher was not the best at teaching. This was supposed to be a beginner's class and frankly, it was not taught like one. The teacher even helped me pick the fabric and chose a directional print. Big mistake! Anyway, I gave that quilt to my dad to use in his Chalet/cabin in St Zenon in the hopes it would disintegrate. Unfortunately, it is still around and he loves that quilt. I tried getting it back from him so that I could destroy it, you never know how famous I will become as a quilter and I wouldn't want that quilt to haunt me! LOL Well, he will not let it go. Even bribing him with a new and better quilt doesn't work. He takes the new quilt and says thank!

Back to my story, I fell in love with quilting purely by mistake. I walked into Yankee Pride late January 1996 and saw a beautiful blue sampler quilt. That's when Judy said to me "why don't you give it another try?" I asked who was teaching the class and she replied "I am". So I thought, why not, what do I have to lose. Well, that's when I truly fell in love with quilting and fabric. Ten years later, I am still quilting and loving every minute of it! I teach machine quilting and am presently hoping to teach a basic quilting class in the future.

I started to quilt on my Grandmother's sewing machine, a Remington bought in early December 1959. I have made a few quilts on that machine. Had I not taken a machine quilting class, I may still be sewing on it ;o). The class made me realize that if I wanted to machine quilt, I needed to buy a new machine. That's when I fell in love with Bernina. I now own two Berninas, a 1090 (my first) that I wouldn't trade for the world and a 180E, computerized embroidery. I bought the 180 for the variable speed, but have not used it for machine quilting yet.

I am now getting into machine embroidery. I am just beginning to get my feet wet. I did buy myself the Bernina Designer Plus V5 software that I am just starting to learn. The possibilities are endless! I will definitely write on my embroidery adventures in the future.

I also use quilting design software, Quilt-Pro V5 and EQ 6. I do not design much but enjoy playing around with the program. I am presently learning how to use these programs to create the hand outs of my future quilting classes.

Well I think that is enough for the moment. I am looking forward to meeting other quilters and reading about their adventures.