So I’m a Quilter Now?!?

When people find out you sew, they automatically assume that you must be a Quilter, and then they ask you to replace a zipper in their child’s winter coat lol!! When we were in our previous location and, pre-covid, when we had in-store customers, they would be almost visibly shocked when I’d say, “I’m not a quilter”, and when Melissa said that she wasn’t either, well, you would have thought the world dropped out from beneath their feet lol….”you OWN a fabric store and your not a quilter????”! They’d look at you in bewilderment and would ask, “well, what do you make then?”, to which we would enthusiastically reply, “everything else” lol!

Now, don’t get me wrong, I certainly don’t have anything against quilts, quilters or quilting, its just never been an interest of mine! I’ve seen some amazing quilts, absolute works of art, and I am memorized by the incredible workmanship, but I’ve never looked at one and thought, “I want to make that too”, literally never!!! And the reason why is very simple…I like almost instant gratification projects! When those same customers that thought I was crazy for not quilting, would tell me that they’d been working on a quilt for months, or even years, it was my turn to be shocked! No way would I have any patience for that, and the thought of having that unfinished project just sitting there taking up space, well, that’s almost more than I can handle lol!!! I’m sure it’s irrelevant for me to even mention it, but I will, just for clarification lol, I never have any WIPs or UFOs hanging around my sewing room for any length of time, that’s just not something that I’m comfortable with!

So then, what’s up with the title of this week’s Blog Shawna lol?!? Well, I’ll tell you lol, I recently finished a project that required a small amount of quilting….and I didn’t hate it lol!

Way back in November 2022, on an episode of Shannon Fabrics Sew Together Tuesday, Teresa and Hawk were visiting Sam Hunter of Hunter’s Design Studio and they were featuring Sam’s amazing line of Holiday Gnome Wall Hanging patterns! Well, as the Gnome lover I am, I was completely invested in this project and was jotting notes and already trying to decide which one I’d do first! I immediately signed up for Sam’s newsletter and was treated to a New Subscriber discount, which is always so appreciated but especially when you’re converting these good old Canadian dollars to USD ugggg! With the ever so generous discount, I decided I would allow myself to buy 2, maybe even 3, I just needed to settle on which ones! One I knew I “had” to do was the Sew Gnome, will you just look at how cute it is!!

Well, as life does, things got busy and I forgot! Then the other day I was ready to sew something….but what? Uh huhhhhh…..THE GNOME WALL HANGING!! Off I went to the website to do some shopping, immediately putting the Sew Gnome in my cart and then back to try to figure out 1 or 2 more! Finally I decided, added them to my cart and proceeded to checkout, when, it happened….I had waited too long and my welcome code had expired 😢! Well, that made my decision easier, and really, this was probably more practical as this way I could buy the one I knew I wanted and then if I loved making it, I could buy more later! Listen, we tell ourselves what we need to hear sometimes, right lol?!?

While I read through the instructions, I replayed Teresa’s video and what I kept hearing over and over was how you could make this as basic or detailed as you wanted, for all aspects of it! I could do that, I was confident enough in my skills that I could make this anyway I wanted! Teresa obviously made hers with lots of Minky while Sam does hers in all cottons….I decided to go somewhere in the middle and do a mixture! This project is such a great scrap buster so I immediately decided to use up all the little odd pieces of the fabrics I had used in my sewing room makeover, and since they’re all sewing themed too, it was perfect!

So, now here we are, it’s time for the first step which was to QUILT THE BACKING!!! Again, you don’t have to do this as the first step, you can do it after but since I was using a combination of minky and cotton, I didn’t want to squish the minky by quilting it, I wanted it to stay puffy (those are some very technical quilting terms, aren’t they lol), so I chose to quilt first! After I made this decision, I ran into my first complication….as a non-quilter, I don’t have batting just hanging around lol! As a bag maker, what I do have loads of is fusible fleece so that’s what I used! I fused it to the Kona cotton I was using and then I was all set to go! I decided I would also do this my way, and that’s not that free motion quilting, that’s very clean and precisely measured out lines! Automatically I went to grab my ruler to draw the lines but then I remembered that my awesome Judi Juke came with so many extra feet and attachments, one being a quilting guide!!!!!! I searched YouTube for some videos and between a few of them, I had it figured out…..and for proof, even took a picture of the process lol!

Here’s a little secret between you and me…..I absolutely LOVED this process!!!! Those straight lines, oh my heart, they were beautiful! Now please remember, this was a wall hanging so the whole piece was about 7.5″x36.5″ so we’re not talking about a huge piece at all, so would I have loved it as much if it was a huge, cumbersome project? Perhaps not lol!

The rest of the pattern went easy peasy! There’s lots of prep but I did it while watching a movie and playing ball with Norman so it was wonderful! I will note that it comes with SVG files so I had initially planned on using those to get my Cricut to cut it all out for me but I couldn’t figure that part out and I was eager to get started so I just did it the good old fashioned way! It all went off without a hitch, well…until it came to the binding process! Once again I hit up YouTube and found a lovely video on the Art Gallery channel that made so much sense to me and judging by the title, was exactly what I needed, Binding for Beginners- Easy Way to Finish Your Quilt Projects!

Yet again, such a satisfying process, making all that bias binding, so much so that I made way more than I needed lol!

Ok, have I kept you in suspense long enough?!? Here it is, my amazing Sew Gnome!!!!!!

Eeeeek!!! I just love it soooo, so much! I changed up a few things here and there but mostly I just followed the video and the pattern and I just love how it turned out! I had so much fun going through my stash and picking out the fabrics, deciding what to use where….I just absolutely loved the whole entire process!

Am I a quilter now? No lol, not at all, but it’s fun to say so for little projects like this! I will absolutely 100% be making more of these but that will be the extent of my quilting endeavours lol! Now, which cute little Gnome will I chose next?!?

I hope I haven’t insulted any “true” quilters with my silliness, you all know that I just like to have fun lol! And I also hope you won’t judge my “quilting” too closely lol!

Have you made any wall hangings? If you have, what type of quilting to you do on them….lines or free motion?

I hope you all have an amazing week…because you’re all amazing! Cheers!

Shawna