Wednesday 10 October 2012

Happy Birthday Mum!

My Mum is celebrating a significant birthday today.  I will be in touch during the day, and will see her this evening, but wanted to take the opportunity to say happy birthday Mum!

Mum is the reason I started quilting.  She has always done bits and pieces of handcrafts (knitting, sewing, etc.), but a few years ago she took a quilt class at Nancy's Embroidery, a local shop which stocks all sorts of hand crafting supplies, and runs a great range of popular classes throughout the year. I think her first quilt was a japanese inspired quilt using indigo dyed fabrics, sashiko embroidery and beads.

Mum taught me to use the sewing machine at a young age, and kept her patience in check with my somewhat cavalier attitude to sewing (I did my best at all times to avoid pinning or ironing, with the expected results, which I usually then took to Mum to fix).

Mum made me a queen sized glorified nine patch quilt for my 21st birthday when I asked for one, even though it meant cutting out all of the curved pieces with scissors (I still love it and use it everyday).  I want to make a quilt with her glorified nine patch templates, but man, the thought of all those curves is intimidating.  I don't think my Mum was under the impression that it would be anything but difficult, but she still did it.

Mum helped me make my first quilt when I wanted to, even though I insisted on doing all the measurements in metric rather than imperial measurements (yeah, my seams were 1 cm instead of a quarter inch, and I was still trying to avoid those pins).  She basted it and quilted it for me, even though I know those are not her favourite parts of the process.

Mum gave me her lovely familiar sewing machine when I moved into my own home.  It is a Bernina Sport from 1988, and it still runs beautifully, because Mum is really good at looking after things.  She now has a fancy pants machine but I don't think she likes it as much as the old one.  Thanks Mum, I do appreciate it.

Mum is getting on the internet and going modern.  She is not doing heaps of quilting at the moment (instead, she has been doing lots of knitting), but she does have a sewing machine cover underway, using Elizabeth Hartman's Mod Mosaic tutorial.  I am looking forward to seeing the finished product.  I might see if I can convince her to let me post it on here.

I have lots of other nice non-quilting related things to say about Mum, but I think this post is wordy enough already.  Essentially, all of the above is a super long winded way of saying happy birthday Mum, I hope you have a good one.

2 comments:

Fran said...

Lovely post! What a cute quilt in the last post!

Martin said...

Thank you Adri for those kind words. And I thought I'd taught you not to make people blub on their birthday! I'm very happy you are enjoying quilting and very proud of how quickly you're acquiring knowledge, skills and of course the finished results.
Love Mum x.