Judi Kirk Talk - by Inez

Hi everyone,

Another well-attended Open meeting of Shirley Quilters. Firstly Deirdre gave notices about forthcoming events:

The show at Lullingstone Castle 19th – 21st July

The exhibition “Threads Through Creation” at Southwark Cathedral 25th July – 26th August

The festival of Quilts in Birmingham 1st – 4th August

Kate and Chrissie have birthdays this month

We then had a talk from Judi Kirk entitled “ My Quilting Journey”. Judi is an international quilting judge who also teaches in the USA, next month in Grand Rapids.

Her talk was sub-titled “ 25 years of Tips, Tricks and Techniques” and she certainly fulfilled that promise. Her tips were very detailed and clear with a video accompaniment.

She talked about how to buy a sewing machine, a really good straight stitch is the main thing for quilting, about choosing pins, machine needles, thread, how threads are manufactured, colour choices, tension, grain in fabric, whether to wash your fabric before quilting and how to use spray starch ( you can apparently make your own using vodka!)

She described ways to trim seams on half square triangles to avoid shadowing and she had a clever way to match points ( I will certainly be trying that!). She also described how to use wadding for best effect.

Free motion quilting is apparently easier using a walking foot and she explained how to do this compared with the usual way. She also talked about joining binding.

Her motto is: 1) Enjoy it  2) Finished is better than perfect  3) Nobody checks if the points match if it’s keeping you warm!

Judi finally had time for a few questions – she loves doing workshops best of all but has no time for writing a book. The quilters she most admires are Philippa Nadier – Ambassador for British Quilting in the US and Ricky Tims, also in the US.

Over tea we were able to speak further to Judi and Deirdre thanked her for coming.



The meeting ended at 9.20 with a raffle.