I started quilting about 18 (gasp!) years ago, and the adorable Eleanor Burns was my first teacher.
When my girls were little (ages 5 and 3) I watched her PBS show Quilt-in-a-Day and after about 2 months of just watching, I finally dove in and made one.
My first attempt was an Irish Chain (don't you just love these early 90's colors?):
A very simple design, but I made it time-consuming by adding a complicated hand-quilted medallion in each white square. This took me forever, and I am honestly surprised that I finished it. Thank goodness for machine-quilting these days!
The thing I remember about making this quilt is getting it all laid out on the living room floor. We lived in a tiny house and the quilt took up the whole area. I called my hubs and girls in to take a look, and the girls looked at each other, joined hands and said "let's jump on it!". And they did!
I was crushed. It took me a few minutes to remember that they were just little girls and didn't know that jumping on my handmade quilt squares was a bad idea.
Teaching moment, eh?
I used a plain old white sheet on the back of the quilt. I hardly ever do this anymore because the expense of a printed fabric is totally worth it:
Nine years ago while I was pregant with Aubry, I made the quilt below. It was called a Bear Paw and it consisted of TONS of tiny pieces. I remember wondering how I had gotten myself into this one!
A couple of days before I went into labor with my girl, I parked myself on the couch and rested for 3 days straight. I felt terrible! My girls brought my glasses on ginger ale and took care of the boys while I sat on the couch.
And stared at this quilt hanging on the wall.
I think I found every mistake possible to find (tons of them!) and I really disliked this quilt for a long time afterward. I have since come to appreciate it again and I love the memory of waiting on my girl while gazing at it!
The quilted wall-hanging at the top of this post was made right before I tucked away my sewing machine for about 5 years, only to have it come out of the closet when I discovered craft blogs.
Craft blogs!
What a great thing to discover. I am so glad that I rekindled my love for sewing and creating! It's such a great way to relax and create something that says a little bit about me.
What about you? What were some of your first sewing/quilting projects?