My First Quilt

It took a long while to complete my first quilt. I'd signed up for a beginners quilting class at a local quilt shop (LQS). Went to the first session, and didn't go back. I don't think I even called after I put off the second class. I don't know why. The teacher was lovely, the approach was strip piecing, and the fabrics were pretty cool, if traditional. I was always sort of embarrassed that I'd never finished.

Fast forward seven years. I wanted to make a baby blanket, and I knit. I knew, in my cold-black-selfish-heart, that there was no way I wanted to knit a blanket. I'm the worlds slowest knitter. In hindsight, maybe it would have been cheaper to just take a Continental Knitting class and get better. But instead, I wanted to sew a blanket. A quilt, even. The fabrics were still around, even though I'd tried once to give them away and then to sell them at a garage sale. (Aside: Isn't it funny how you'll price garage sale items right back into your house, if you don't really want to let them go?)

In hindsight, I fell in love with the coordination of a fabric line. I liked the browns, greens and rosy pinks. But I'm not so much a florals girl.

I didn't find the book we'd used in class. So I did a little research, got out my graph paper (which I always have around), and got to sketching. For simplicity, I decided on some rail fence and nine patch blocks.

1/4 inch seams? More like 1/4 inch-ISH seams.

I had nine different fabrics, and I would work with factors of nine. Excellent! I did my inventory on the fabrics, and decided how much I'd use where. And I made blocks. Then I put them together and made bigger blocks. The thing is, I used strip pieces to cut out my rectangles and squares. But I didn't truly use strip piecing, which would have been much easier. Nope, I cut out all of my shapes and pieced them. Oh My.

Barry and Levon had a lot of puddin'. I had a lotta blocks. And they were lookin' good.

One of my many lessons learned: How awesome pressing is! It was a learned a little late for this block.

 
And then I made columns, put in some sashing, and vioooooola. Cotton batting, backing fabric, pinned the heck out of it and quilted it with a walking foot (sticker shock there, OUCH).

Zig Zag quilting that I traced on the top with chalk.

 
Made a straight-grain binding following the excellent tutorial from Oh Fransson! - Making and Sewing Binding. Which was awesome.

Yep, the sashing matches the...binding.

What do you know, half way through making this quilt I found the Alex Anderson book we were supposed to work with in class? Log Cabin Variation or something. Meh.

Eh, I like what I'd come up with better. At least for this quilt. It was finished, washed, squee'd over, and then mailed to a relative we love dearly but don't see nearly enough.

Sorry for the crappy photos.

Finished, prewashing.

And the back. Almost like Charlie Brown's shirt.