Los Angeles Modern Quilt Guild

I started sewing young. I sew a lot by hand, for a few years I made 5 or so patchwork blankets, with flannel backing and sating binding, all done by hand. I like sewing by hand, it enables me to watch TV or interact with other people, rather than being tied to my machine. It also helps with my imperfectness in cutting fabric. Even with a rotary cutter, mat and ruler, my lines never seem to work out the way I want them to.

Anyway I have at least 2, likely more, quilt tops that need to be basted, quilted, and bound. These are tops done by hand, no fancy patterns or anything, and I don't even really like them anymore, but it would be nice for them to be finished (but I feel a block finishing them by machine when all the piecing was done by hand).

So here come the Los Angeles Modern Quilt Guild (LAMQG), a group of highly inspirational women, who have bonded together over a mutual love of quilts. We have been meeting once a month for a couple of months to have show and tell and swaps, and just started meeting one weekend day a month to get together and sew.

My first meeting I felt like a fraud, since I had never really finished a whole quilt, and certainly not anything like the other beautiful quilts the ladies brought. A lightbulb went off, I had a baby shower in a month, I could make a modern quilt for that, and I did, and it was imperfect, just like all the other blankets I had made, the stippling didn't quite work out (not enough pins) and my corners were far from mitered (a bit of a rush job). But I do love the general look of my first modern quilt, especially the colors (pink, my favorite!), and it received many oh's and ah's at the shower (Quilts final name "Under the Sea"). The white mendocino Heather Ross mermaid fabric, used in the quilt, may be my favorite fabric (ever!). I also made a match onesie (With a ruffle butt) for a onesie competition at the shower (sadly, I didn't win!)

So in my head, I wasn't a fraud any longer, but I didn't even get to bring it to show and tell (because I finished it hours before it had to be given away), and I didn't get to wash it and make it all crinkly with love. My new mission is to finish the 2 quilts I have in the works, and the 2 I have in my head, so I can at least bring one to meetings (and take one of those lovely little photos of a stack of homemade quilts all folded and stacked neatly on top of each other).