Have you heard of the "slow sewing" movement? It's nothing new. It's the resurrection of something very old: stitching by hand. My friend, Lynn Storer, has been slow sewing her whole adult life. You can read a little bit about her in my other post HERE.
This past Saturday, I invited a few friends (some seasoned, some beginners) to join me in an afternoon of slow sewing on Ginny's quilt. This quilt sleeps at Lynn's house on its frames between quilting sessions. We made a lot of progress!
My favorite part is just sitting around with friends, chatting, and listening to stories about anything and everything. This is how women did quilting before the days of machine-everything, and I think they really had a good thing going.
Linda, sitting next to me in the picture below, and Lynn were musing about whether hand quilting was a dying art. I told them I had been reading about slow sewing gaining a larger following lately in the virtual quilting world. It gives me a sense of responsibility to keep the art alive. If we stop teaching the rising generation, eventually nobody will know how to hand quilt, or embroider, or crochet, or knit, or whatever-by-hand.
There is something satisfying, in our fast-paced world, about sitting in one spot and doing something slow and repetitive in pursuit of creating a work of art. And for some reason, friends made around a quilt are some of the BEST friends.
Well, I'm happy to be carrying on a time-honored tradition. And my two younger friends I invited had their first-ever hand quilting experience. Lindsey and Cassa took to it like champs! If any of you in the Grand Junction area want to learn, let me know and I'll invite you to our next quilt along.
No comments:
Post a Comment