Old Methods, New Methods

I remember sitting with my Grandma Cline while she worked with quilt pieces. She was petite and I was just a kid, so we'd sit together in her chair. Usually she was cutting pieces (while I drew or wrote on a paper tablet), and I remember how she did it. She'd hold a cardboard template against the fabric in one hand, and cut it out with scissors (kind of free-handed) with the other hand. Space being at a premium in her little house may have been one reason, or maybe so she could stay sitting down. But I can still see her yet cutting out quilt pieces this way!


My way is to lay out fabric and use a ruler and pencil to mark out EVERY PIECE individually, then cut them all out. Yes, that may be tedious to some, but with my obsessive-for-detail personality, it works for me and I'm satisfied and enjoy doing it that way.


In recent years, the rotary cutter and cutting mat have come into use, along with fast-piecing that makes it possible to put together a quilt top in a very short time. At one point I got a small mat and rotary cutter, and they stayed in their packages for a year or so before I got brave enough to use them recently. I'm still getting the hang of it, but did use this method to cut out border and binding strips, and it was certainly faster.


In the same idea, I sure had to convince myself (the ultimate traditionalist, wanting to quilt just like Grandma did) to use my sewing machine for piecing blocks and tops. Let's just say that at this point in my life, I'm tired of "slow," and wanted to get some projects going without taking a year to piece a small top by hand. Good grief, once I used the machine to piece, now that's the ONLY way I want to do it! It does give more consistent, straighter, stronger seams, so there are definitely plusses to this method. But if I was a pioneer out on the prairie with no sewing machine, the hand-piecing would be the ticket.


I have one thought - what would Grandma have thought of the rotary cutter and mat? Piecing a quilt top in one day? Machine quilting?


That's another thing I've taken some time to warm up to - machine quilting. It is pretty, it's just that my "traditionalist" attitude had to give it a chance. It has its own good things, and can be very effective for a quilt. So though I haven't done that yet (but might try a small project?), I now have room in my "quilting repertoire" for all these new-fangled things and methods that STILL end up with a beautiful, hand-made treasure.