Teaching Quilt in Spanish with Luis Sanchez, Episode #31
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Click Here to check out Luis’s YouTube Channel. The videos are all in Spanish, but you can use the translator to read the translation in English.
Luis was raised listening to a sewing machine hum because his grandmother sewed all the clothing in the house and also worked as a seamstress in two factories. The sound of the machine running was relaxing to him so when his grandmother passed away 7 years ago he inherited her machine.
He learned how to sew first and created basic projects, then moved on to wallets, purses, and bags. From the videos he found he learned the basics and eventually ran across my videos on free motion quilting, but had no idea what I was doing in the video, but thought it could help make his bags a bit better:
His first attempt at free motion quilting was actually thread painting on this little cat embroidery. When I saw this my jaw nearly dropped off my face – that is some serious skill! That is really good thread painting for your first attempt!
Luis is also an ER doctor and he balances quilting with his career by using the hidden 5-10 minutes in the day to plan projects and get a small amount of stitching done. He also looks at different projects and ideas online in the quite times of the night when work is slow.
So even though Luis is a very busy person, he is still managing to create beautiful projects and quilts and share his love of quilting and sewing with the world through his videos.
His channel is entirely filmed in Spanish. There are a lot of accents in Spanish and words that some countries use that others don’t. Luis tries to speak in the most neutral Spanish he can so he’s the most clear to the widest number of Spanish speakers in his videos.
Quilting isn’t as common in Costa Rica, but he does have a local longarm quilter and there are some local quilting groups in his area. He mostly buys thread and fabrics online because they’re hard to find good quality fabrics in his country.
Now that he’s begun designing his own patterns, Luis is planning to teach in person and travel to different quilting groups. For him, sharing this knowledge is the most important part of learning any skill.
Luis loves making baby quilts. Sometimes he won’t know who the quilt is for, but by the time the quilt is finished a baby has appeared and it’s perfect for them.
What I loved most about talking with Luis was seeing his passion about quilting and sharing with an open heart. His love is so clearly being expressed through the quilts he is creating. That is a universal language to me!
Click Here to find Luis’s YouTube Channel
Looking for more Hello My Quilting Friends Podcasts? Click Here to find all the episodes shared so far!
Help Support this Podcast
I really hope you’re enjoying the Hello My Quilting Friends Podcast. I love putting this show together and as of this week we are moving to a weekly show! Every other week we will have a quilting friend on the show to talk about quilting and on the other weeks I’m going to answer a question about quilting and explain more about my quilt making process.
Please help support the podcast by checking out our Quilt Shop at LeahDay.com. We have quilting tools, books, patterns, and more to help you master quilting on your home machine.
Just in this week we have more No Sewing Until You Quilt It applique books from Ann Holmes. This is an out-of-print book featuring Ann’s awesome turned edge applique technique you can use to quickly build intricate quilts without taking a single stitch on your sewing machine.
We include a free Sunflower Quilt Pattern when you order No Sewing Until You Quilt It from our website. Click Here to learn more!
Now for news around the house…
I’m having a Mini Bonanza and stitching up lots of little quilts for myself and for collaboration projects. Here are my fall mini quilts:
I love the candy corn minis! I found the perfect colors of Kona orange and yellow for this project and I can see making a whole candy corn quilt! For this year I only have time for these little hoop quilts that will be decorations for the wall. What is a hoop quilt again?
I also have collaborations with Margaret Leuwen from Miss Markers Quilts, Christa Watson from Christa Quilts, and Dora Cary from Orange Dot Quilts coming up soon and I need to get these bad boys quilted!
The wonderful thing about mini quilts is they are quicker to create and test a particular quilting technique. I also love hoop quilts because I don’t have to bind it! I stick it in the hoop and cut off the excess fabric. I’ll likely make this set of fall hoops permanent by gluing the quilt into the hoop so it holds up well for storage.
My plan is to create a series of hoop quilts for each season so I can switch them out on my wall. I love the idea of testing out construction techniques on something small like this so I don’t have the pressure of finishing a massive quilt with a weird technique (which I’ve learned is CHALLENGING!)
Writing a Fiction Novel
Another thing I’m super pumped about is participating in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) next month. I’ve heard from so many quilters that say they want to write a book. So write it!
The first step is planning, organizing your thoughts, and figuring out what is going inside your book. Even if you want to write a non-fiction quilting book, it’s wonderful to have a set month with clear goals to knock it out.
For the past month I’ve been working hard on my outline and creating 30 scenes of the book and now that it’s all laid out, I’m super excited about writing it! This is very much like how I create quilts – the easiest quilts I’ve created were planned and designed meticulously before cutting a single piece of fabric.
In the book’s case, I wrote a 6000 word outline with characters laid out in detail before starting the first scene. No, not all books need that much detail or that big of an outline, but this is my first fiction novel and I didn’t want to leave a single part unexplored. I’ve hit snags halfway through major quilts because I said “I’ll figure that out when I get there.” and when I got there I still didn’t know where to go!
Now most of my novel writing information comes from Joanna Penn from The Creative Penn podcast which I highly recommend. Joanna basically got me back into book writing and her constant enthusiasm about fiction and non-fiction writing was so infectious I had to try both this year!
(Affiliate) I also recommend the book 2K to 10K which you can also find in audiobook. Yes, I will be writing for speed over the next month because I don’t have a million years to tell this story. I had the idea for this novel more than 5 years ago and I’ve been sitting on it. I want to tell it so the characters will stop bugging me!
But What About Your Other Book?
Yes! We also have the new book Explore Walking Foot Quilting with Leah Day coming out in just a few weeks!
If you’re confused why I didn’t talk about it much, the main reason is I don’t have any control over it right now. It’s still with my wonderful editor and layout artist getting polished up and the covers designed.
We’re planning to start the preorder for print books in the next few weeks and the official launch will be Thanksgiving (November 26th) for the print and ebook editions.
But here’s the great thing about working with other people – while that book is still being polished, I can be doing other things! I’m also working on a new quilting workshop, the fiction novel, and of course creating many new video tutorials for you to enjoy.
Following Curiosity to a Quilting Frame
As you can tell, I’m moving in a lot of different directions right now, but this feels great because I’m following my curiosity and feeling so energized to try new things.
Something I’ve been very curious about for awhile now is quilting on a frame – basically longarm quilting where the machine moves over the quilt. Working with Grace Company has allowed us to create a fantastic series of videos on Sit Down Longarm Quilting.
Now I’m ready to transition to a quilting frame and see what the Grace Qnique 14+ is like when it moves over the quilt on a frame!
So the frame has arrived and it’s in boxes and it’s going to take us a few weeks to work out this transition. Basically machines are going to move around the house and I need to shift furniture and rearrange two rooms. So I’m planning out this transition so it goes smoothly and planning to shoot a few more videos on the Grace Qnique as a sit down longarm before moving it to the frame.
I don’t know when we will begin sharing these new videos, but I’ll definitely be showing the reality (and ugly stitches) that come from learning a new style of quilting. I don’t expect to be very good at this so it will be fun to show you each step of the quilting process!
Whew! That’s a lot of fun things going on! I love this life and I really enjoy sharing it with you. Remember to check out our Quilt Shop at LeahDay.com to help support the show!
Let’s go quilt,
Leah Day
Looking for more Hello My Quilting Friends Podcasts? Click Here to find all the episodes shared so far!
Oh yes. Candy corn circle quilt!! Pattern please? Thanks!! So pretty all of them.