Diary of a First time Quilter

"A quilt will warm your body and comfort your soul."

Growing up, my grandma would make quilts. She kept a large wooden quilting frame in her dining room (the only room big enough to store it). The frame looked HUGE to me, and I recall my mother often saying that she would "someday like to learn to quilt." To me, my mother could do anything, so if she couldn't quilt, it must be REALLY hard.

That was my opinion of quilting, a difficult and complicated process filled with geometry that little old ladies (who were actually secretly genius scientists) conjured up using complicated machines and frames that reminded me of a stretching rack that I saw in an encyclopedia as a child.

I grew up and didn't give quilting another thought.

That was until the old couch blanket that had followed me through college and first apartments and first heartbreaks and first (and second babies) finally decided to shuffle off and completely fall apart.

I am a firm believer in access to a warm, cozy couch blanket at all times while watching T.V. and when "Ol Faithful" finally left us, I knew we would need another cozy blanket that would (eventually) conjure up the same fuzzy feelings for my girls that this old couch blanket did for me.

Enter the quilt.

Only one who sleeps under a quilt is comforted by love.

When I started wanting to make a quilt I knew I would need a few tools of the trade; ideally a rotary cutter and self healing cutting mat. When I went to the stores to look around I was really discouraged. The cost was astronomical (to me). I could not afford to pay $80 for a rotary cutter. My MIL has been quilting for years now, and took to it like a fish to water. Her quilts are beautiful and have won awards, I knew I would not produce that caliber of quilt my first go around, but her helpful tips and tricks along the way sure did help. If I could give anyone advice it would be to seek help where help is available. It can save you tons of heartache (and ripped out stitches) in the long run! She came to my rescue and gave me an older set she had. It felt like Christmas, it was obvious, the UNIVERSE NEEDED me to make this quilt.

I did not want to spend a ton of money on this quilt, ever the bargain shopper I took to the social media selling sites and found a woman who was selling a bag of various fabrics for $20. After looking at my local fabric store, this seemed like a pretty good deal to me and I liked the colours she had put together so I went for it. the bag ended up having more than I needed, so I have more options for future projects! Bonus :)

I decided on a lap quilt and honestly i didn't even really plan on a specific size. I'm so new to this, I didn't expect the quilt to be perfect and (I didn't really know what I was doing). I started by washing and ironing all of the fabric. This step wouldn't have been such a big deal except my dryer was on the fritz, so I had to wash and line dry which produced a wrinkly project for me to iron. C'est la vie, keep on truckin'.

I cut my fabric into 7 inch squares to begin with and then cut them diagonally with the rotary cutter. I randomly paired up each half square with an alternate color and used my sewing machine to zip through each square. I trimmed each square and ended up with a ton of 6 inch quilt squares when i was finished. the actual amount is lost for eternity. I'm not very organized, do you see a pattern here?

I laid my squares out on my kitchen floor, the only space I had and played around with the pattern until I liked how it looked. I then proceeded to carefully and meticulously sew my squares together in long strips/rows and finally sewed each row together, ironing each and every seam flat (which I realized later was probably a bit of over kill).

My final block size ended up being 5 inches and I finished by trimming the entire quilt with the rotary cutter.

For the "quilt batting," I found a large piece of flannel at my local Valu Village which ended up being the perfect size, hello Universe!

I watched a few YouTube videos to learn how to bind the back piece of fabric to the front (total novice here, Thank You YouTube), and while it seems that everyone has their preferred method, I settled on machine stitching the binding to the front of the quilt and pulling it towards the back and hand stitching it to the reverse side, using a 2 inch wide strip piece of brown fabric that was included in the bundle. I am particularly pleased with how the binding came together, it looks crisp and neat (in most places).

This project monopolized my time, my thoughts and even my dreams at certain points and I was very happy to see it completed. I challenged myself and stuck to the project until it was complete (another out of character move for me). I think in total it took me 3 weeks and $30 to complete this project.

All in all, I am happy with the results and have a few quilting projects already lined up for the future.

We have been enjoying the lap quilt for a few months now, it has been dragged and snuggled under and cried on and spat up on and washed repeatedly. It has become a member of the family and has never missed a movie night.

Are you a new quilter? An experienced one? I like constructive feedback! Comment below!