Saturday, August 24, 2013

My First Quilt




It's been a while since my last post but I've been busy with lots of projects.

When I semi-retired, I thought I would have a lot of time on my hands.  I'm sure that you have heard from other retirees there is never seems to be enough time to do all the things you want to get done in a day.  Where does the time go?

I had always wanted to learn how to quilt but not hand quilting.  If I tried to hand sew a quilt, I would never get finished, not in this lifetime anyway.  No...for me it was to sew a quilt using my brand new Husqvarna Ruby sewing and embroidery machine.  My last Husqvarna was with me for 29 years and it never let me down.  In fact, I gave it to a young lady in my family who was just starting to sew.  She loves it as much as I did.

I took a class on "Making Your First Quilt" and I was told that at the end of the 6 weeks, I would have our quilt finished.  Well, that's exactly what happened.  We learned how to select fabric, plan our cutting to get the most out of our fabric,  sewing our pieces together, the importance of pressing, making a "quilt sandwich", quilting a design of our choice through all three layers and finally steps to bind and finish off your quilt.  Sure enough, at the end of the 6 weeks, I had my lap quilt done.

The fabric I chose is French General by Moda and all the fabrics co-ordinated to make a lovely quilt.  The backing fabric also from the French General line really pulled everything together.  I couldn't have been more happy and pleased with myself for getting it finished.  Do you know that there are some sewers out there who have had quilt "on the go" for years!  If you love the fabric that you picked, I don't think anyone would have a problem in completing the quilt top.


I thoroughly enjoyed all the steps involved in making my first quilt and since then, I have made several move.  With each quilt I tried to learn something new and of course I made a few mistakes along the way.  I will showcase some of my other quilts on future posts.