Quilts - the story so far ...

I'm not sure why I started making quilts. When we were living in New Zealand, back pre-children, I remember being out shopping and unwittingly discovering something called fat quarters. What the ...? So then I started collecting fat quarters randomly from different places we traveled around. Now I look at a quilt and remember choosing particular pieces of fabric. Which is really quite funny because at the time I had no idea what I was going to do with them.

I am not a class person, which makes it sound like I have no class. Some may say this is true, but what I am really saying is that I am very impatient. If I want to make something, I will make it (or start it) now and learn by trial and error. The thought of sitting through a class makes me feel a little ill. I only go when friends gently persuade me, and only then because I know I will have a good laugh with them. Back around 2001, I decided that I really wanted to make a single bed quilt for Beth. I had no idea how to do this. I found a fat quarter mystery quilt pattern on the internet and found that the directions were really easy to follow. At the time, this was what was important for me. A pattern that I could easily follow. In hindsight, perhaps I wouldn't have chosen this pattern again today.

I decided it was going to be a red quilt. I became obsessed in the hunt for the "right red". In one shop that I was hunting in, I will always remember the person there telling me "It doesn't have to match, it just has to go", as she watched me taking bolt after bolt off the shelf, holding it to my existing fabrics, shaking my head and saying "no". Valuable lesson number one. I wish I had have found this lady earlier. The fabric I then chose made the quilt come alive.

I made this quilt without a cutting mat. You don't want to know how I made it. I had a rotary cutter though ..... I was unaware that precision was important and followed my cutting rule of thumb, near enough is good enough. Here is the end result.

I call this "freestyle". Which then means it is meant to look like that. Can you imagine my horror when I went to "stitch in the ditch" to quilt this? More like dog leg in the ditch. So I quilted it with hearts, fifty in total. I told Beth I did hearts to show her how much I loved her. Technically, this wasn't wrong. Valuable lesson number two. When you are impatient, yet seek perfection, don't choose the tricky triangle patterns. At the end of the day, I was quite happy with my first quilting result.

Moving right along to quilt number two. I had by now discovered the joys of fabric on-line and discovered Amy Butler. Where had she been all my life? I bought the fabric and fondled it for twelve months before I decided what I was going to do with it. I just couldn't cut it all up into little pieces. So big squares it was. I categorised all the fabric by pattern size and depth of colour and drew up a grid and mapped it all out. That way I would have a more even and interesting spread of fabric, with no clusters of colour or pattern. This time I was a little more careful with my cutting, but still managed to be out by millimetres on some squares (how does that happen?). Very happy with my end result and even happier with the machine quilting that I paid an arm and a leg to have done. After my first hand quilting experience, a queen size quilt just made me feel dizzy at the thought.

Still no binding though. Oh well, one day.

I enjoyed the big squares so much that my next two quilts I made were this pattern again in a cot size. One for a friend, the other for my niece. I then started on one for Alice, but now she is in a bed. That is the problem with quilting. As much and all as I love the end result, it just takes me so long. Alice's room is an apple green with purple/mauve trim, hence the colours in her quilt.

I wanted to use all floral patterns, especially violets. It became difficult to find a green fabric with a big pattern on it, so some of these fabrics are a bit "older" than I would have liked for her, but when you see this in her room, it goes really well. I will use it as a foot runner, doubled over at the end of her bed. Seeing all the log cabin squares about at the moment is tempting me to try my hand at a single bed quilt for her bed, but I really must finish this one first. Yes, they are safety pins you can see in it.

I am hand quilting this one. Just doing loopy waves, no pattern, who needs a pattern when you can stuff it up quite well on your own without a pattern interfering. I am going to use different shades of mauve and green embroidery thread.

There you have it. The story so far. I am seeing more and more fabric I love everyday and modern styles that I didn't know existed a couple of years ago when I started. Two things that are my golden quilting rules. 1. Only ever use cotton batting. Who wants to cuddle up to nylon? and 2. When choosing and placing fabric, does the fabric I am placing make the quilt "sing". I read that once and it has always stuck with me. You can place one piece and think it's OK, but then put another piece and step back and say "wow". If only that was so easy.