FIRST QUILTS...

This is Helen's first quilt.  She says that
she did all the wrong things one does when quilting.

She began by seeing that there was a course in "english piecing" I think she said.  She had the pink print which was all cotton to make a dress for one of her girls.

The light blue and dark  were  given to her by a friend and Helen says that they both had poly in them.  The white was cotton.

This quilt is hand cut, hand pieced, hand quilted.  Now the fact that this took her about ten years to make is remarkable to me....I just don't have the attention span to take on a quilt of this size.

  However, her Grandmother's Garden quilt is soft from use by Andrea and is much loved.  It's beautiful in its composition, with knowing the details that Helen put into the project makes it all the more loving.  There is also a label which Helen just wrote and then cross-stitched the date etc.

That in itself was so fine that the camera didn't capture the work.  I might try with another camera one of these days.

After this class she was hooked on quilting
and continued to take classes in the many
aspects of hand quilting and design.

This, is my first quilt...no lessons here folks.  cut with a rotary on a 12" matt and a 12" ruler.

I still have some of the 280 squares left in a little stash somewhere.  I cut so many of the orange and white that finally my sweetie asked how many did I really need.

Only about 120 to make it work so you can understand so many extra orange squares.

The fabrics were sheets, $4.00 for the orange, $2.00 for the white and the back print which was fish or some such.  I have redone the binding on this because the first attempt was looking like I had rolled a cigar in the fabric.  The other part was that I had to add some width to the quilt because I didn't realize that the quilt would "shrink" somewhat when putting it together.

I bought polyester batting...boy was that hard to put the basting through.  I almost quit right there and then.

Trust me, this didn't happen on Helen's quilt. 

Undaunted, as we all are when we love this craft, I made another and another with the same 12" tools.  Then I saw the large matt on sale....wahoo!  Life became so easy!

What was your first quilt....did you take lessons?   I've only learned from the lessons Helen gives me when I hit a wall of what to do.  Patience is not in my dna.

We are battened down today as the lake is roaring, the wind is howling all around us.  Only the brave will be out on the lake today.  There is only one other person down the way on our little island.

We are 11 days without our bear visits.  We are all hoping that we have seen the last of the pesky guy.