We all start somewhere. The very first time you create something new, is full of grit, trial, hope and love.
I received a cheap, plastic beginner’s Singer sewing machine for Christmas one year right after college. I learned to sew in high school, but didn’t continue through college. So now that I had this new sewing machine, and enough knowledge about good fabric to be dangerous, I went off to my local quilt shop and stocked up on Anna Maria, Amy Butler and realllllllly old school Tula Pink (circa 2009)
The “not wanting to use the good stuff” started at quilt one. I had this beautiful pile of fabric, and knew I wanted to make a quilt, but also knew that the first one was more trial than anything. Plus, I’ve always had a fear of using the good stuff…..it can be a candy bar and I’ll be afraid to eat it at the wrong time. I know, I’m very strange. So off to Joanns I go (tear) to pickup a stack of fat quarters, polly batting (gasp) and back to home to cut out my cardboard rectangle templates out of a Cheerios box. I cut out all the rectangles needed to make Amy Butler’s brick path pattern out with scissors after tracing the cardboard rectangle out onto the fabric. Each one. One at a time. (And saying that out loud makes me wonder how I fell in love with this art?)
But wait, it’s gets better……actual construction. Blogs were just hitting their peak, and there was so much information out there (not like today, but enough to get by) and I read all about chain piecing and stitching in the ditch and it sounded so easy.
I sewed these rectangles together short sides together in long strips, per the pattern, and was convinced I was chain piecing because it looked like a chain. Didn’t know why that was a special technique, I I thought all piecing was chain piecing.
Then to quilt, I made my quilt sandwich and stitched is the ditch around all the rectangles for the quilting. SOMEHOW I figured out how to make binding and sew it on. I don’t remember much of that step the first time, so I must have blocked that process out!
I was so dang proud of this thing! It immediately went on our bed, and I started planning out the next one. Now here we are, 14 years later and still loving the process, and finished quilts just as much as I did on day one!
Want to have your own first quilt story, and make something you fall in love with (with step by step easy guides: no searching all the corners of the internet and someone to guide you through every step of the process)?? Be on the lookout for something great coming your way!!
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