my first quilt

As you may see, on my side bar there's a button for the blogger quilt festival, so I am sharing my entry! It's nothing spectacular, but it's mine. It is my first quilt.

When I was in 5th grade my parents bought a new house. About that same year, my dad and his friends sold their company, IC Designs to Cypress. Funds were not as tight but my parents are far from carefree with their monies. Point being mom could finally buy a new sewing machine. My Pfaff. (Yes I know you've seen the picture) The machine came with a set of sewing lessons. Of course mom already knew how to sew but she took the classes. The teacher was great and somehow it came up that she teaches kids too. Mom asked if I wanted to take a class and of course I did, I wanted to know what it was all about. So off to class I went. First I made a Quillow that I loved so much I lost it at a car race one weekend. I packed that thing with me every race weekend and at Girl Scout camp for inside my sleeping bag, in case I forgot a pillow, or around the campfire. The pillow was done with paper piecing, the rest was more like a comforter. I loved it, especially the paper piecing part.

After trying to make an outfit, I decided I liked quilting more. Mom signed me up for more private lessons and with my teacher, we went to go buy fabrics (from FabricLand, I don't know if they are still around at all mine were all bought out by JoAnn's) to make a Streak of Lightning quilt. The three of us picked out 14 fabrics, 7 solids, and 7 prints that connected the solids together. We started cutting and sewing strips. We made it to sub-cutting and began re-sewing the strips that were now squares.

At that point my teacher had to sell her house and move (oh just for fun I should tell you I had a HUGE crush on her son. I was in 7th grade at this point, so it didn't take much to make me crush, but oh he was so cute!) I had lost a big chunk of the quilt and after looking off and on over the years I was sure she must have some of it and I have some of it.

The summer between my Jr and Sr. years of college I went on a Shop Hop with my mom and her two friends. The quilting bug had hit hard! I decided to take what I had and see what I could do with it. If nothing else I could make a lap quilt, or some pillows. I also was in the process of moving out and sorting all the things I would want to have someday and all the things I didn't need any more. We found all the parts to my quilt! It turns out I had been finding and replacing three separate sections of the quilt, two sections with strips sewn together and one chunk of the strips before becoming squares, not yet sub cut!

Mom and I looked at the quilt,played around with what I had, made two more strips and stepped back. It was almost twin size. I must have been missing some more but it was enough. We raided mom's stash and found a blue and a yellow I liked for the borders, and a black with hearts that I made into a "flappy" border (it's sewn into one seam with a second border but is folded over and you can play with it flipping it around!) We even were able to raid her stash for the backing! It's the softest cotton that's not flannel I have ever felt and it has moons and stars swirling on sky....so perfect for night time!

I tie-quilted it with black yarn and yellow and blue threads to "tie in" the borders (yes roll your eyes, please!) Ever since then I have made many many tops...I think I currently am at 15 tops, five to be finished but 10 done! I don't see stopping any time soon!