Sharing sewing basics and beyond, class mantra is ‘we love beginners’

Even on a cloudy early spring day the community room at the Hampden Municipal Center was filled with light flowing in from tall windows on three sides. Kathy Childs of Bangor and her daughter Melissa Raymond of Winterport were busy conducting one of the monthly sewing classes sponsored by the Bangor Chapter of the American Sewing Guild.

Portable sewing machines, most with touch-pads and computerized functions, were set up at long white tables. Lengths of pretty fabric tumbled from an assortment of cardboard boxes and tote bags. A portable ironing board and an iron were set up for pressing wrinkles out of cloth.

Plates of goodies such as banana bread, cookies and other munchies appeared as if by magic. Paper cups of coffee fortified the morning. The half-dozen women in the room were learning to set quilt blocks “on point,” so that the design runs diagonally. They were making a table runner, which required five blocks.

Childs, a guild member, has been sewing since she was a fifth-grader and a member of the 4-H Club. She still has the first thing she ever made – an apron. But she had never done any quilting until she moved to Maine in 1997. “I joined the sewing guild to make friends,” she said, and those new friends taught her to quilt. Until then she had sewed only garments.

“We love beginners,” Childs said. That day she taught the class many things. “I teach them how to shop for fabric by brand names, how to preshrink the fabric, how to fold it on the grain before cutting it, how to use a rotary cutter, and how to do the math calculations needed to construct the quilt block.”

Childs opened two plastic bags of silks she obtained from a woman who specializes in selling silk fabric on a popular Web auction site. The woman’s e-mail address is MUCHenLITEnd@aol.com, Childs said. Childs plans to make a patchwork jacket from the silk pieces.

As the women got down to the business of calculating, cutting and stitching, the air was laced with words such as “sashing,” “presser foot” and “selvedges.”

Beginner Lisa Scofield of Hampden said she had been trying to learn quilting from books. She had come to the class “to learn to do it right.” She gazed at a log-cabin block she had constructed at home from fabric in spring colors – greens, blues, tans, pinks – trying to assess why it did or did not work, the way she had envisioned. “I can’t believe how much I’ve learned already,” she said, after only a half-hour of working one-on-one with Raymond.

In other parts of the room, women were learning how to use cutting mats ruled in grids to aid straight cutting.

Vicki Reynolds of Augusta, also Kathy Childs’ daughter, was doing hand-stitching on a child’s teddy bear pattern quilt. She prefers hand sewing to machine stitching and likes making small pieces rather than large pieces such as bed-size quilts.

For those who are new to quilting, Reynolds recommends the book “I Can’t Believe I’m Quilting” by Pat Sloan. “It’s my bible,” she said.

Those interested in attending guild sewing classes, Childs said, don’t need to run out and purchase a new, high-tech computerized sewing machine. “It’s best not to begin with high-tech. All you need is a machine that does straight stitching – new or used.”

The next class, “What You Can Do with Straight Stitching,” will be held at 9:30 a.m. Saturday, May 13, at the Hampden Municipal Building. Norma Binan of Hampden will teach the class. The class is open to the public. To learn more about the class and future guild classes, cost, fabric requirements and to register, call Binan, 862-4367, or Kathy Childs, 941-8815.

Snippets

. Need help with knitting or crocheting? Visit www.knit911.com, or www.crochet911.com.

. The Maine Needle Arts Guild will meet at 11 a.m. Saturday, May 6, at the Page Home and Farm Museum, University of Maine, Orono. Member Carolyn Ulrich will teach introduction to crewel embroidery using a piece designed by embroiderer Betsy Leiper. Crewel embroidery kits will be supplied. The cost per kit is $15. E-mail Michele Goldman at michele@jobmaster.com to learn more about the group.

Call Ardeana Hamlin at 990-8153, or e-mail ahamlin@bangordailynews.net.