Gifts

After I made my first quilt, I started making quilts for family and friends. My two roommates at the time were the first recipients. The below quilt was the second I made, while still taking the class. It was interesting because it only took 6 fat quarters (as well as some white fabric) to make the front. Ali chose her own color scheme, a beautiful purple and navy. Though the quilt is a little small (short of twin sized), it is lovely; the color scheme is fantastic the way it is varigated and alternating. It's called the Brick Wall, and it's put together by sewing strips and then staggering them to make the brick pattern. The white blocks hold the whole thing together. When I was a beginner, I hand tied my quilts, as suggested by my teacher. In my old apartment, this was quite an undertaking as I had to move around all the living room furniture to make room for the quilt. I use embroidery floss (the heavy duty kind) doubled-up to tie the three layers of the quilt. In this case, I was going to cut the ends of the knots, but Ali said she liked them long, so I left them as is. Since I always have extra fabric, I made a matching pillow as well (sitting in the rocking chair next to me in the photo).

After the Brick wall quilt, I immediately started making a quilt for my other roommate. I was overly ambitious and decided to do a Lone Star quilt. LUCKILY I was still enrolled in the class because I needed a lot of help from my teacher. The Lone Star pattern is more advanced, using diamonds to create a big star shape. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of this quilt but I do have a close up of the color scheme. I'm hoping to get a picture of the final quilt up here one of these days because I tell you, it will be the one and only Lone Star Quilt that I will ever make. The pattern involved cutting strips of each color and sewing them together. The trick was to rotary cut the sewn strips at a 45º angle to create the diamond shapes. Though having the strip pre-sewn was supposed to be a time saver, I really struggled to maintain the correct angle. But in the end, the quilt came together, and Julie was happy with the results. The yellow flower fabric, purchased at Jo-Ann's, is one of my all time favorites for its bright sunny nature and its ease of coordination with other colors and patterns.

Finally, that spring, I completed a quilt for my sister. This quilt was instrumental in my progression as a quilter for two reasons. One, it was the first time I purchased fabric on E-Bay and two, it was the first time I machine quilted a quilt (opposed to hand tying). I want to give E-Bay a big shout out as I have purchased yards of fabric over the years and I have been very satisfied with all the sellers. In fact (as I'll get to in a later post), you can often buy pre-cut squares of varying coordinating patterns (I like the 4" squares). But more on that later. Kim's quilt was a fun one as it incorporated her current love for panda bears. I purchased the panda border fabric on E-Bay and then was lucky enough to find the matching bamboo fabric at Jo-Ann's. I used a pattern from about.quilts.com which was okay, but I felt the instructions could have been more detailed. This was also the first time I had to miter the borders of my quilt so the pandas could keep walking.... walking....walking.

The pinwheel pattern was challenging as well, and from making this quilt, I realized I don't like triangles. In fact, I don't think I've made a quilt with triangles since. But the end result, just shy of a twin sized, was great. As I mentioned before, I wanted to machine quilt this quilt as it didn't have the regular square pattern good for hand tying (like placing a knot every 3 blocks, for example). I thought it might be easier to use fusible batting so that the three layers didn't slip up when I was coaxing them through my machine, so I did, and I spend a good portion of the afternoon ironing the quilt to the fusible batting on my hardwood dining room floor. However, I came to realize that some fusible battings will gunk up your sewing maching needle, so I would not recommend it. The easiest thing to do when you want to machine quilt on a regular sewing machine is to baste (with pins) the quilt in many places to secure the three layers. So, after ironing the fusible batting, I machine quilted the pattern around each of the pinwheels and also along the edge of the border. Then I had to wash the quilt to get rid of the fusible batting stuff from the inside of the quilt. The end result was great, but this quilt has a heavy feeling (not as soft and cuddly as my other quilts) which I think is because of the fusible batting.

The work begins!

Well, as I was going through all my photos last night, I realized how many quilts and other crafts that I have given as gifts that I forgot to photograph!! However, in the next few days I am going to be posting all of the pictures of quilts I do have. I will try to post instructions or at least links to the patterns I used as well as any words of wisdom I might have gleaned from the creative process.

Here is a picture of my very first quilt:

The pattern is Trip Around the World (I used Trip Around the World in only 8 Hours by Jane C. Smith). As I mentioned in my "About Me" section, when I arrived at the class, I didn't even know how to work my sewing machine. However, I quickly learned and a beautiful twin sized quilt came to be. I remember spending hours at the JoAnns with my mom trying to pick out the perfect 6 fabrics. To this day, I don't like one of the selections, but my mom and the other ladies at JoAnn's said it was great! I knew all along I wanted to have maroon and blue. It was a matter of coming up with the remaining accent colors. The Trip Around the World directions suggested getting coordinating colors and placing them in varigating order. I definitely didn't do that, but I am still pleased with the results. In fact, when you create the Trip Around the World, you do half the quilt and then the other half. You are supposed to put the top together so that you get concentric diamonds. I put my together backwards so I ended up with a giant X pattern. I wish I could put up a picture of the quilt laying on a bed, but as you'll see below, I can't.

Now, on to the advice. A few things I learned during the creation of my first quilt: maintaining a quarter inch seam allowance is imperative. On my machine, the quarter inch seam can be measured by the edge of the foot. See what happens when you don't maintain the right seamage:

Yikes! The batting is exposed! And let me tell you, it is difficult to hand stitch up these rips. In fact, it gets worse when you wash the quilt. So be conscious of your seam allowance when you are cutting and sewing the quilt!

Next problem: the sun!

For the first few years I had this beautiful quilt, I used it as a bed spread. We kept the heat very low in my old apartment so it pleasantly kept me cozy and warm. The quilt stayed in pretty good shape because it spent most of its time spread out. Then, when I moved to a warmer climate, I bought a beautiful quilt stand, hoping to display my first quilt prominently in my living room. For over a year, it stayed in the same spot, smack dab in front of the living room picture window. One day, I passed by it to open up the window, and I noticed the sun damage. Alas! The formerly beautiful quilt had been permanently damaged. Though I can still display it on the quilt stand, I can no longer lay it out on a bed. As they say, live and learn!

And so it begins!

Okay, hello everyone. I have decided today I am going to maintain a blog to show off all my quilting adventures. I started quilting about 4 years ago and have made many gift quilts as well as other items such as belts and purses. It will take a while to get this blog caught up on all my creations, and I'm sure I'll share a little bit about life in there as well. Enjoy!