Bob and the Quilting Club

Back in July, Bob put a notice up on the Nextdoor Ap, saying he wanted to start a quilting club. Were there any takers? Me and about 95 percent of the rest of Texarkana responded with a resounding, "yes!" Bob then took the first 10 folks who had the presence of mind to send him their e-mail address and he invited them to join his quilting club. 

Meanwhile, some biddy in Texarkana started posting on Bob's thread about how she'd been quilting for eleventy-hundred years and she knew the entire quilting community in Northeast Texas. She'd never heard of Bob. And if she didn't know Bob, he couldn't possibly be a legit quilter. 

This stirred up a huge fuss, I guess. While this was going on, I was in Michigan and missed the entire ordeal. But I doubt that would have swayed me. However, it did sway eight others of the first 10 Bob selected. Which is terribly unfortunate, because they missed the first meeting of Bob's Quilting Club. 

Miss Mary and I met at Bob's house a couple of Saturdays ago for our first quilting lesson. Bob, who happens to be a paramedic and is married to a nurse, has been quilting for about 20 years. We saw his beautiful quilts--he has many. We saw pictures of others he's given away or sold. Bob knows what he's doing. Plus, he has all the toys imaginable for his hobby, including his own he-shed in the back yard with a gigantic commercial long-arm quilting machine for the embroidery. 

Bob spent the afternoon teaching us the basics of our first quilt. We went over cutting, ironing and seams. Somewhere in that lesson we actually sewed two pieces of fabric together as well--but there is little sewing involved in the art of sewing. Then, Bob sent us home to try out our newly learned techniques. Our homework was to make all of our quilting squares for our very first quilt before our next meeting.

Last Friday, I finished cutting, measuring, ironing and even sewing together my 46 quilting squares. It is no exaggeration when I tell you I started at 6 a.m. and finished at 11 p.m. All of my seams aren't straight and I improvised (to my detriment) some of the fabric choices--Bob provided our fabric and I added one of my own. However, I am pleased for the most part, given this is a first quilt. 

We meet again in two weeks to start putting the quilt together. There will be plenty of white space in between the quilt squares, so the quilt won't be as busy as the squares make it look in the pictures below. 

See how those seams come together to form an intersection--the seams on the bottom, not the top ones, yeah... it's harder than it looks. 

I even made the seams straight twice! 

Here, not so much, but I doubt anyone but me will notice. 

This is a sampler of my quilt squares. Imagine this as a blanket with more white space in between.

This is a long-arm quilting machine. It is a good 10 feet or so.