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Not many quilters can say they sold the first quilt they ever made, but that’s exactly what Sue Anderson did when she was just 12 years old!
“A neighborhood man wanted a quilt, so he asked my mom if she knew of anyone who would make him one. She said, ‘Oh, Susan’s just getting into that!’ So I made him a Trip Around the World quilt.”
That was just the beginning of Sue’s lifelong interest in quilting.
Sue quickly became a fan of photo memory quilts, especially when she learned how to print on fabric from HP fabric printing guru Joe Hesch.
One of her current projects is a wall hanging with photos from her wedding. In the background is a close-up of the newlyweds’ hands showing their wedding rings. Surrounding it are photos from the wedding.
Last Christmas, she made memory quilts for each of her three siblings using childhood photos and a picture of their parents. Since her mother and one brother are deceased, the wall hanging is especially meaningful for her and her siblings. To make it even more special, she embellished the wall hangings with lace from her mother’s wedding veil.
“Most families only have one photo or one set of photos from when the kids were young. Printing multiple copies on fabric sheets is a great way to spread them around,” she says.
Sue uses a similar quilting technique to capture memories of special vacations that she and her husband have taken together, like a whitewater picture-in-a-picture quilt.
simple technology
Sue says the best part of doing memory quilts or photo quilts is that it doesn’t take complicated or specialized software. “For photo software, I use the software that came with our digital camera. Plus we’ve got a scanner. I just touch the photos up with the photo software and pull them into Microsoft Word. Then it’s just a matter of printing them out. It’s easy,” Sue says. She also uses the HP Custom Quilt Label Kit to create labels that help preserve the story behind each quilt.
Learning how to print on fabric was pretty easy too, Sue says. She gathered some useful tips from the Internet. According to Sue, the best tip she found was to clip the corners on the leading edge of the fabric paper so they feed through the printer more smoothly.
After a little experimenting, she was printing on fabric with her HP Deskjet printer and even making her own fabric sheets. Since then, she has taught others how to print on fabric, including doing a workshop with her small group of quilters, Tangled Threads.
It helped that as a technical writer who does documentation for printers, Sue wasn’t afraid to experiment with her printer.
“A lot of people are afraid they’re going to jam up their printers, but I’ve had no problems,” Sue says.
a community of quilting
Sue is active in her local quilters guild, which has about 300 members. She served as president of the group in 1988-89, just one year after first joining. Her small quilters group, Tangled Threads, is an offshoot of the larger guild. The six women meet each week.
“People bring things they’re sewing on. Everyone brings their latest catalogs and magazines and we read through those. And we discuss everything from the economy to war to quilting,” Sue says.
Over the years, the group has become so close-knit that they often vacation together and even attend family events like weddings.
quilting towards the future
Quilting has evolved from a utilitarian necessity, where people quilted because they needed something to keep warm and used the fabric they had left over from other sewing, to an art form, Sue says.
Sue looks forward to spreading the word about quilting with printed fabric to the quilting world at large.
“The things you can do now are just amazing when you print your own fabrics,” Sue says. “As people discover new ways to spend their free time, they just need that kind of an outlet. I think it’s going to continue to expand.”
