First Quilts // Coin Quilt // Finished Modern Quilts

Sharing my first quilt on Gen X Quilters  this week got me thinking a bit about my first quilts, and how far I've come. I don't think I have ever shown a picture of this quilt on my blog before--In late 2007 I fell in love with a quilt my sister-in-law A made out of Flea Market Fancy using this pattern. That Christmas, we were in Utah and my mother-in-law bought me some fabric (Blossom by Urban Chiks). We added in some solids from her stash and away A and I went, planning and chopping and altering the pattern. I did then what I do so often now--cut out the quilt without making a test block. I don't recommend that, folks. It never turns out quite right. Or, looking on the bright side, it's an excellent way to improve your improv skills.

Somewhere along the way, I messed up the math, but I still liked the result. This baby is big--bigger than twin but just shy of queen. And it's the first quilt I made all. by. myself. I cut it out. I bought cheap solids. It languished at my house for some time. I originally had the prints paired with a white solid instead of cream, and it was taped up on the then pink (!) walls of our basement with blue painters tape and man! It was an ugly sight.The quilt travelled back to Utah for a vacation before it was finished.  The part that makes me smile most is the quilting. I begged my mother-in-law to quilt it for me, but she (wise woman!) said I had to learn sometime, and this was the quilt to learn on. Besides, aything else I quilted would be smaller and much easier to handle. I'm so glad she did, or I might have never tried free motion quilting. I stayed up half the night to quilt it on her very nice machine before we went home to Virginia (I had a cheap machine with tension troubles back then).

The quilting is atrocious. Atrocious! But we use it every day in our no longer pink basement, and it makes me smile. Look how far I have come! I have since drunk the Angela FMQ kool-aid (I have bought 3 copies of her new book Free Motion Quilting with Angela Walters) and recommended the book to everyone I know. It's that good! And thankfully, my free motion quilting has improved a bit since 2008!