DEVELOPING OUR QUILTING SKILLS
One of the reasons most of us enjoy quilting so much is the never-ending challenge of new skills to learn and new techniques to try. A quilter can never master all the possible quilt techniques, but we can add skills with each quilt we make. As part of our ongoing series, The Quilt Notebook, we are discussing how to steadily improve as a quilter by using a “Skills Inventory”— a list of quilting skills we’ve mastered and a list of techniques we’d like to try.
THE ESSENTIAL SKILLS
While no one can learn all the possible quilt skills, there are a few “Essential Skills” that every quilter must learn. Today, on Open Line Friday, I would like your help creating the Essentials List. The “Essential Ten”-(more or less) should include all the skills necessary to create the most basic quilt, and include techniques that will save time and frustration later (like stitching a 1/4 inch seam accurately). We will use this list in our Quilt Notebooks as a starting point for our Skills Inventory and I hope to create a tutorial for each of the basic skills.
LET’S BEGIN
A few essential skills I would include on the list are:
- Stitch an accurate and consistent 1/4 inch seam.
- Use a rotary cutter properly to accurately cut straight lines.
- Memorize three crock pot meals for all-day quilt-a-thons.
LET’S BRAINSTORM
After we create our “Essentials” list, we will dive into the “The Next Ten” list–but we’ll save that for another day…For today…What do YOU think are the skills that every quilter must learn…I’d love to hear!
Lori
You might also like: The Quilt Notebook – The Skills Inventory
The Quilt Notebook – Setting Priorities