$10 Quilts

Our local quilt shop, The Quilt Rack in ancaster, has what is called A Ten Dollar Quilt class.
The rules are simple:

• you sign up for a given day and time of the month
• you show up every month on time and sit through a half hour of promo stuff for the shop
• you are given the pattern and fabric to make one 12 inch quilt block
• you get to chose the easy or more difficult pattern and one of the colourways offered

But where does the ten dollars come in?

• to join  - you pay ten dollars
• if you miss a month - you pay ten dollars
• if your block is not complete - you pay ten dollars
• if you are late (arrive after Lucy takes the floor and says welcome) - you pay ten dollars

Get the point?

The fun part of the game is to collect all 12 blocks for the original ten dollars you pay to join. I always looked at my calendar for the whole year and chose a monthly date and time that would work. It was so popular that often there were 30-40 of us in 6 or more classes.

The best I ever did was $20 and the worst was $30. Once I took the completed block in my bag with me to India and planned to stop in at the shop  - on time - on my way home from the airport. I could have done the whole thing for $10 that year, but, alas, I was on day two of food poisoning I got on a very long train ride and flight home from India and reaching home safely was more important at the moment than getting to the class on time. I would have made it, but, you know, nature was calling.



$10 Quilt 2010 in progress

The shop also offered finishing classes the following year and we were not allowed to purchase any of the designated fabrics until after the finishing classes. But I was always on the lookout for fabrics to complete my blocks on many of the road trips I was taking and collected enough extras to complete the things twice over. And mostly on sale because that is more fun.

$10 Quilt 2007 in progress 

In the past few months I have had camera and internet issues and more recently I had the Blue Roses spread out across all the tables as I was quilting it. But not now. Everything is now in place and I can start to look at and plan what to do to complete  some of them. That does not mean I will actually complete the things, but will start to plan.

It was back during the winter of 2008-09 that I sat in the shop right beside a completed Dear Jane quilt and had the opportunity to have a close up look at some of the blocks and this for several months. I could not join the scheduled classes because they were the same days I had school, so I eventually decided to start my own class and I did later that year.

$10 Quilt 2011 in progress

I joined the class for 5 years and decided that I had lots of other things I was working on and I was not finishing the quilts. But it was only one block each month.
  

Finishing fabrics

I realize now, that one of the things holding me back was how to quilt them. Last night I had a machine quilting workshop here with my GORF girls and introduced them to the importance of tension and how to get it right. I am so clever. I need to listen to what I am teaching them and then do it myself.

Blessings,
Chris