Greetings,
I’m a guy, and a retired teacher of little kids, and I love the Lord. As a teacher I was used to being extremely busy on a regular basis. So when I retired I needed some things to do, so I took up quilting as a hobby.
I’ve always been fascinated by quilts. My wife and I would always make a point to check out quilts at the state fairs, but as a teacher there was no time to get into doing my own.
Well I took a class and made a little sampler quilt that my teacher said looked very masculine. It was a fun class, even when I was threatened by another student that she’d squirt me with her water bottle every time I slapped down the pressure foot. I learned to do it gently.
One thing I hadn’t bargained for was that if you are going to quilt you have to do a lot of ironing as well. I’ve gotten used to it. I now have my own water bottle to squirt others with.
We learned how to do Nine-patch, Log Cabin, with some variations, Rail Fence, Shoo-fly, and we also did some applique. I had the most trouble with finishing off the French-fold binding where you connect the two ends together. I still mess that up.
My first real quilt is called Rocket’s Red Glare which I started by using a mistake I made copying something out of a book which had Nine-patch squares on the diagonal, with triangles hooking them together. It looked like a large rocket ship sort of.
From there I had a lot of fun doing nine-patch blocks with very bright color combos. I used my rocket and made others of various types and sizes, as well as celestial bodies. At the bottom of my quilt I made the top of the earth and put my rocket blasting off from Europe. I lived over there in Romania for a few years.
That quilt is on my bed right now. It’s about 90 X 82 inches. I hooked the nine-patch blocks together with cool black sashing which made the colors stand out and be accounted for. I made a colorful boarder of pinwheels made by sewing together 4 one and a half-inch rails, cutting them into four and a
Rockets Red Glare
half-inch squares, and then cutting them diagonally the same direction, and arranging them into pinwheel blocks.
I had a lot of fun doing the quilt, and learned a lot of lessons on assembling a quilt together. I made plenty of mistakes but I usually find a way to incorporate them or make things work. That’s the beauty of quilting.
To put the whole thing together I had to take another class on using a free arm sewing machine for quilting. that was kind of scary, but I did it. The quilt took me about 8 months to complete. More quilting adventures to come. I’ve made 3 more with two on the way. I’m having a riot!
Lastly, the lover of Jesus part of my life. My wife and I are community supporters of a Christian campus group called Christians on Campus. We are endeavoring to put the “C” back in campus. that is Christ. We enjoy having students over for meals, fun and fellowship. They bring their laundry often. We have an open house, open heart, open refrigerator, open Bible and my quilts come in handy here in the winter. The warmth of a home environment is fun for the students who are away from home.
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