2016 marks my fifth year working at Art Gallery Fabrics. For those of you who may be wondering what I do here: I wear many hats, but my main job is to be a product designer (fashion/quilts/home decor), and to oversee our product design team with the guidance of our creative director. When you reach certain milestones, it is of human nature to reflect on what has changed and what has been learned. I must confess that when I started, I had no idea about quilts or the quilting community. I majored in Fashion Design because I needed to understand how to manipulate fabric (I like making things with my hands) into the designs that I wanted to exist in this world. Learning how to quilt has expanded that desire even further and I am eager to keep creating.
This is the first quilt I ever designed:
I sewed it in the original colouring which was made with Hyperreal Garden by Pat Bravo.
And I also made this mini one with Pure Elements as a going away gift for one of our co-workers (she loves Sonny Angels, of course) :
I was having some issues with the tension that day…
But before it becomes an auto-biography, I want to say that the main point is that I have learned SO much about quilting, both designing and sewing (I still have much more learning to do), and that the inevitable has happened: I have also fallen in love with quilts. It's impossible not to, once you understand the tradition that it carries, the amount of work and skill that it takes, and also that there is a style for everyone, just like in art, which is why I irrefutably want to say that to me patchwork and quilting are an art form.
Here at the studio we like to learn from each other. I'm an asker… the auto-correct is saying that word is wrong and perhaps it sounds the same, but I'm not going to correct it. I like to ask, and not only Google… I like to ask people/my workmates, who by the way are so knowledgeable it blows my mind. Because I ask about so many things (mainly about gadget/software topics that seem to be changing every other minute), I also like to answer, and teach whenever I can.
One of those whom I am constantly bombarding with question is Steph. Steph oversees the Social Media & Marketing department, and knows pretty much everything about Siri + many other things. Steph and I share an admiration for all forms of art, and guess what? She wants to learn how to sew.
So because this is a topic on which I can be more of an answerer (see samples above), we agreed that I would teach her the basics (very basics) of quilting, and we thought it would be great to share our journey through a series of blog posts since we will each be making a mini quilt.
Please stay tuned as we share the first… shall we call it "episode" (?) of this learning collaboration.
DO YOU HAVE ANY "MUST KNOW" TIPS FOR FIRST TIME QUILTERS?
If you do, please comment below, and we'll all learn from each other.
r'n's!
Lauv
*The header is a cropped photo of The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dalí
Art Gallery Fabrics - The Creative Blog 
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