first quilt

Maybe I should say my first FINISHED quilt. I have another quilt I started when I was about six years old that's still not done. Maybe someday?

This one is done though. It's mostly made of charm packs of Tabby Road by Tula Pink. I wanted to concentrate on the assembly of the quilt rather than cutting fabric so I started with pre-cut fabric. I've learned a lot about modern quilting tools and machine quilting and have added a lot of new words to my vocabulary. I also learned you have to invest a lot of money to get started in this particular practice. Kind of like furnishing a woodworking shop, which is something else I'm working on.

This is a crib size quilt. I wanted to start small to get the feel of everything. It's the first project I've done on my new sewing machine, so I was learning how to operate the machine as I went. I had to buy a walking foot for the machine, because it didn't come with one. The quilting is minimal on this quilt. I didn't plan ahead for it, so after everything was pieced I couldn't find a thread color that would look good on all the squares. I finally just stitched in the ditch around each square. My stitching wasn't very straight and a lot of the stitches are alongside the ditch rather than in it.

As a rank beginner, I relied on  this quilting book & online tutorials to figure out all the steps needed to finish the quilt.

Trouble is, there are a lot of different ways to do things. How to decide which method? For example, at left is the quilt before binding. The tutorial I watched recommended cutting the backing and batting 8 inches wider and longer than the pieced part and I don't know why. The process of pinning the sandwich went well, but I ended up cutting off all that extra material. Seemed wasteful to me.

I did better with a wonderful tutorial by Leah Day on how to machine bind a quilt. She made it so simple!

Now I just need to wash the quilt and send it to its new home.

PS There's still plenty of time to join Hanna's DIY postcard swap.

Make and send ten postcards and get ten cards delivered to your own mailbox.