A new hobby

Since the last time I wrote here, I took a sewing class and my mom generously lent me her machine. I had ambitions of making a quilt. But now I’ve made two! I’m so ridiculously proud of myself that it’s kind of pathetic.

My first quilt was completely designed by me. I made a lot of mistakes, but I learned from every one of them, and I really love it. It’s 38″ square, a great play mat size. The patches are 8″ and I used a 4/8 seam allowance, which I now know is kind of big for quilting. I put a line of patchwork on the backing so that the piecing wouldn’t be obvious, but I didn’t center it, so I did less actual quilting so that it wouldn’t be obvious. I machine-sewed the front of the binding and hand-sewed the back, which seemed to take forever until I got the hang of it.

My second quilt (which actually appears first in the gallery below) came from a pattern I found in Quilts, Baby!, a great tutorial and inspirational book. It’s called Intersection, and I picked it because it had less patchwork and I thought it would take less time. I wanted to give it to a friend and only had a few weeks until her baby shower. I also needed to confront my fear of quilting, and with rows and rows of straight lines, I most certainly got my practice in. I pumped that sucker out in two and a half weeks, and I am so happy with the way it came out. It has a sophisticated look about it. I am so happy with the white binding because my seam allowances were small and everything looked so neat. I finished it at 9:30 the night before the shower, so I’m a little sad I didn’t have more time to spend with it before giving it away. But it has a good home now, and I’m so excited to work on the next one. (A preview: it’s got a ton of tiny piecework and a bright color palette.)