As a long-time quilter

Love to Sew Podcast posted on Instagram about long-time sewists and it made me think "How long have I been quilting?" I think I made my first quilt in 1998. So that is 25 years! 😱 I am 45 years old so that is more than half my life. I have seen many changes in the quilt world but let me tell you about the biggest change I have seen.

One of my first quilts

I started quilting in my 20's. At that time, being a young quilter was a rarity. I always stood out. Whenever there was a meeting with quilters, I would be the youngest one by at least twenty years.

I lived in Paducah, KY which is also known as Quilt City USA. Every year there is a big national quilt show and the town's population doubles. The town's people would always say "Here come the purple hairs." For some reason women's gray hair has a purplish tone when in the sunlight. Maybe it is a hair treatment? Anyway, the point is that it was a lot of little old ladies with quilted clothes walking around town. What you probably have in your head of what a quilter is, if you are not a quilter yourself.

Life happened and for one thing or another, I moved to Maryland, got busy in other things and stopped quilting. I removed myself from the quilting world for 10 years.

When I was quilting back then, I was making similar quilts to what I make now. In the quilt world they are called "art quilts". There was traditional quilts, which is what you think of as a quilt on your bed with all the squares and flowers. And there was art quilts which are more like paintings. A new style started emerging called "modern quilts" that was more minimal with clean modern lines and used only solid fabrics. No cutesy prints or flowery appliques to be found. And that's where I left the quilt world for ten years.

Fast forward to the year 2020. A pandemic stopped everything and all of a sudden I had time to fill and I filled it with fabrics and thread and batting. Got to say, quilting is like riding a bike. 😂 The first quilt I made after my long break is now traveling the country with the International Quilt Association.

Since I had moved to a new place and hadn't quilt in Maryland, I had no quilt friends. I decided to join the DC Modern Quilt Guild. Since we were in a pandemic, all the meetings were virtual. The first meeting I attended was a virtual quilt retreat. It is funny because it is just you sewing in your sewing room with the laptop open and other quilters doing the same while chatting. I opened my laptop and connected to the meeting and saw all the little boxes of people and went 😱. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I was probably one of the oldest in the meeting. There were people with babies and talking about taking the kids to school. This new quilt world is definitely not what people think of quilters.

After spending some time back in the quilt world, I can say that the age of quilters and style of quilts is very different than when I started quilting. There is more energy and enthusiasm. There are more products and businesses out there. Instagram is big. The quilt-along is a new phenomena where a group of quilters work on the same project remotely and share their progress online. But in other ways, a lot of things are the same. I still use basically the same tools I was using. I still use the fabrics I bought over ten years ago. There is still a lot of interest in making quilts from patterns as well as a lot of great original quilts. Quilters are still some of the best, most kind, most generous people you could ever meet. 🙂 As I was reading in Art in America maybe Fiber is the New Painting.