Embellishing Your Quilt – I love to embellish my quilts with stitches, buttons, and beads. This lecture will focus on using machine stitching for appliqué, as well as using beads, buttons, floss, and rick rack to decorate quilts.
Presto Avenue Designs is a small home based business selling quilt patterns online and at various shows and guilds. I retired from teaching several years ago and had been a quilter for a long time. One day I decided to write a pattern for one of my quilt designs. After one pattern became three or four, I started a small business in my house on Presto Avenue. My husband picked the name, and I thought it sounded pretty classy. I liked that there was a bit of magic in it too. We have moved to a bigger house now, and I’m still designing quilts.
No one in my family had quilted, and my mother could only sew buttons or maybe a hem, but I had learned some sewing basics from a neighbor when I was young. Sometime during the 1970’s, I found a pattern in a book and fabric in the department store basement. I used templates from cardboard, scissors, and hand quilting to make that first quilt. When it was finished it was not that beautiful, but I was so proud. I’ve made many, many quilts since then and hope to make them as long as possible. If you’re a quilter, you may feel the same.
I love most all types of quilts, most all colors, and many quilting techniques. Sometimes I enjoy a traditional design and other times I am more thrilled with a contemporary style. I like to use many different techniques including Foundation Paper Piecing, English Paper Piecing and machine appliqué. So you see, I can’t seem to keep myself in one quilting box. I like the freedom of jumping from box to box. This used to bother me, but now I’ve decided it’s my quilting story so I can be the author of the book. My business motto is Keep It Fun, and I am doing that very well!