Mona’s Choice! ((Her First Quilting Experience!))

This is my good friend Mona.

Yesterday was her very first quilting experience EVER !!!
She said she “once had a sewing machine”  that was given to her…she said it lived in a cabinet but was stored and never came out and she doesn’t even know what happened to it or where it went.

Suffice it to say – Mona has had ZERO real sewing experience, which makes her the perfect student!

There were no bad habits to undo!

I taught her right off the bat that while you can use the lines on the mat to make sure something is parallel when you cut it, we don’t use the lines on the mat to measure and cut by…use the lines on the ruler.

Using the same lines to cut by on the mat again and again and again will kill not only your mat, but your blade.  QUICKLY.  Move your work around the mat, and use the lines on the ruler to measure by.

Your blades and your mat will last a lot longer!

I was able to show her how to include the width of the line ON her fabric cut, not cut with the line off of, but next to the fabric.  We want strips to come out the right width so the seam allowance works!

She sewed strip sets, reds and blues together!

A little featherweight is the perfect learning machine.  It doesn’t go TOO fast, it only has one stitch.  It has forward and backward ((if you need it)) and an adjustible stitch length.

Bobbins are easily wound.  Machine is easy to thread ---She was in sewing heaven!

And Sadie and Beanie watched on!

Both sewing!

I am working on some units out of Christmas fabrics and colors for a future book project!  Mona is chain piecing happily away on her strip sets.

I taught her about leaders & enders!  I think she gets it!

And Beanie and Sadie took naps --

This quilting thing is a LONG PROCESS!

We went from chaining 4 patches ---

I taught Mona to sew with the top seam allowance always pointing UP so the bottom one doesn’t flip with the feed dogs.  This helps with keeping seems nesting tightly!

Yes, she now knows about opposing seams to eliminate bulk and encourage seams meeting up instead of shifting!

We spun the seams on the back of the 4 patches so the centers were nice as flat.

Webbing her first block together!

She learned about webbing a block together so nothing gets turned the wrong way, and the rows are assembled in the process.

Here she is sewing the last seam of her first block!

Is she DONE yet?!

Success!!

By 3:30pm She had chain pieced strip sets for nearly 60 4 patches and sub-cut them into already matched pairs by putting two strip sets right sides together, blue on red, red on blue and nesting that center seam so she could cut them into already matched pairs, ready to be fed through the machine.  Another time saver she is learning right off the bat!

Her first block measures 12.5” exactly.  Not bad for a first time girl who is being taught to measure her UNITS FIRST to see if the seam needs adjusting.

It’s a lot to take in for one day of quilting instruction and I think she did great.

She is going to make 20 blocks and set them with sashing and more 4 patch cornerstones.

We are naming this quilt Mona's Choice because she chose the design, she chose the fabrics and she chose to jump head first into this thing we call a Quilting Addiction!

She has done loads of scrap booking before this, so it's not THAT far of a leap from one to the other, is it?

Let me tell you, when I told her there would be 130 4 patches in this quilt, she didn’t give me NEAR as much whining as there has been for both Part 1 AND part 2 of Grand Illusion Mystery!

She will be back today, I need to watch her thread and unthread that featherweight a few times and wind some bobbins before I let her take it home to use while I’m back down the mountain.

I think we’ve hooked her, don’t you?

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