In August, I decided to make my first quilt. I chose a completely ignorant teacher, myself. For this reason, I decided to start small. The above quilt isn’t large enough to keep my dog warm, but I learned a lot about the process.
You may think I used all the modern tools I have available to me – especially Grandma YouTube and Gigi (my personal name for Google). But I didn’t. Why not? I can’t truly explain other than I wanted to see if I could figure it out intuitively. I was taught to sew clothing by my Grandma Ruff when I was a little girl, but I never knew how to make a quilt.
Another reason I didn’t learn from any experts is that I knew I wanted to do it the “wrong” way. Generally I learn what the rules are before I break them, but there was just so little risk in this. I invested a couple of yards of cheap fabric, thread, some batting and a billion stitches.
I started with this basic sketch. I cut and sewed the top of the quilt using my sewing machine and then made a sandwich of top, batting, and backing. Pushing from the middle to the edges, I added periodic pins.
From there, I simply stitched my heart out. I used perle cotton size 8, in solid or variegated colors, mostly from DMC (purchased online). After the entire quilt was stitched, I trimmed the edges straight, and then cut, ironed and hand stitched a binding. I love how it turned out. I think I will frame it and hang it on the wall, but I’m not totally sure what to do with it. I’ll make more quilts in the future for sure. Hopefully the next one can be used to keep me warm this winter.
