1 Feb 2011 - 15 minutes a day

I have a friend at work, Elisa, who is a quilter--and she has a wonderful quilting blog as well--all kinds of tips, techniques and interesting samples. You can tell she is a great teacher by the way she writes.  The other day she wrote:

15 Minutes

Best quilt advice EVER! A teacher once told me that, no matter how busy you are, spare at least 15 minutes a day in your quilt room. You'll have peace of mind and will be amazed how much you get accomplished! You can:

*Iron scraps in your scrap tub
*Gather and file pattern pieces from a completed project
*Clean out your bobbin area
*Replace your rotary cutter blade
*Throw out old thread
*Add a few more strips to your log cabin blocks
*Re-roll your interfacing back on the cardboard roll
*Make some spare quilt labels
*Clean your hot iron with wax paper
*Re-wrap your extension cords
*Make the binding for your UFO(s)
*Change the burned-out lightbulbs

What do you do with those precious 15 minutes?

Huh. That got me thinking about free motion quilting. I have a machine that I can use for free motion, but I am not very good at it. Amy and I had been moaning together about how we just aren't getting any better at free motion. Light bulb! I called Amy and gave her the 15 minute challenge. Every day we would practice free motion quilting. It really is the only thing to do, and 15 minutes? Come on, how hard can it be?

We started our 15 minute challenger around the 1st of February. It was hard to do just 15 minutes. For me it sometimes turned into an hour. After a couple of sessions, I could see and feel a difference. Wow!  Now if can just keep it up. Here are some samples I've been working on. These are 10 inch blocks. I've been using a colored thread on top so I can see what it is doing, and a white thread on the bottom so all you see is the pattern.

 

Meanwhile, Amy called to say her local quilt store was offering a three hour class on free motion. Now that we were actually getting the hang of it, this seemed like an ideal time to take a class, get some tips and get answers to questions. It's a plan!