Throwback Thursday: My First Stab at Quilting

Around about 2002 I decided I wanted to start quilting. I grew up in a house where my mom was always sewing so I had picked up basic sewing skills, but none of my close friends or family members quilted. My mom made exactly one quilt when I was a kid, and vowed never to make another. I got myself the book Quilting for Dummies which I found to have great information on the basics for getting started.

This is actually the second quilt that I finished, but it is the first that I pieced. I didn't realize before I started piecing it that they hadn't left seam allowances for the corners of the 9-patch blocks to not get cut off when the borders were added. What a major bummer for my first project! But it taught me always to double check a pattern before using it. I used a walking foot to do some very basic quilting and the binding was done by folding over the backing fabric (the one and only time I did this, before moving to using a bias binding). I stitched a "label" on the top of the binding. It reads: My First Piecing by Sarah. It wasn't really my first quilt, since I finished a lap quilt before I actually finished this one.

My 9-patch blocks are 6" finished squares and the whole quilt finishes out at about 21" square, a perfect table topper size. These are not currently my colors... I'm not sure they ever were or how I settled on them for my first project. Mom loves them though, and I'm glad that she enjoys the quilt.