I would like you to meet Helen Smith Stone, a local machine quilter who just happens to be a fabulous teacher. Just look at that joyful smile on her face! She loves her work. Helen is also the President of our Northern Lights Machine Quilters Guild in Duluth, MN. Helen strives to promote continuing education for all quilters. She makes it possible for us to come together to share our knowledge and passion for quilting.
Helen is teaching us how to draw. I learned the importance of drawing designs (on paper) to teach our brain how to draw the quilting designs before we attempt to sew them on our quilts. We spent a good amount of time on this before taking our newly trained brains to our machines to practice drawing on muslin sandwich squares. We used cotton batting that was secured with basting spray. I purchased the lined paper that children practice printing letters on and an unlined drawing pad to continue practicing drawing techniques that I learned in Helen's machine quilting class. It is a great tool, she also suggested using the erasable boards if you like.
She taught us about the various threads, needles, batting, quilting gloves and machine tension. If the proper tools are used the results will be so much nicer. We also talked about the proper height for our chair while at the machine. I was setting mine too low. Higher allowed me a much better view of my work!
This is a teaching sample that Helen shared with us. All of this is free motion quilting and it is beautiful! This is my friend, Wendy holding the piece.
Machine time was interesting. There were a lot of OOPS and AHA moments. We had a lot of fun and now we are so much smarter and knowledge is power!I am still a machine quilter wannabe, but closing in on it! Thank you so much, Helen!
