My First: Better Off Thread

While I’m away, I’ve got a few guest posts lined up of people sharing their first quilts – those first quilts where we learn a lot of lessons the hard way! Today we have Janice from Better Off Thread sharing her first handsome little quilt.

My first quilt was only made 4 years ago, so I am kind of a quilting newbie. I’ve been sewing garments forever, both professionally and as a hobby, but I had never found a reason to make a quilt until I was pregnant with my son. I’m trying to remember the sequence of events, but I know I was frustrated at the price of baby bedding and I decided I could sew it all myself. Somehow I found Oh Fransson‘s Simple Modern Baby Quilt Pattern on Etsy, which led me to her amazing blog and THAT led me to the budding modern quilting trend on flickr. The rest is history… I was hooked. I was only planning to make one little quilt and now 4 years and a gazillon quilts later, here I am! I’m getting ahead of myself, though…back to my first quilt.

I bought the pattern and I was SOOOOO sure that I was going to have a girl, that I purchased this as my focus fabric:

Well, my girl ended up having boy parts, but luckily I wasn’t crazed enough to start the quilt before finding out. I was a little bummed, because there were SO many cute girl fabrics and not much for boys (there are actually a lot more choices now). I really loved the blue and lime green color scheme in one of Elizabeth’s original Simple Modern Baby Quilts, so I went all stalkerish and I bought almost all of the same fabrics.  I wasn’t really thinking about being original, I was just trying to replicate a quilt I liked. No one around me quilted and there wasn’t even a Modern Quilt Guild yet, so I just didn’t really think of quilting as being artistic. I was SO wrong and I’m a little embarrassed that I copied Elizabeth’s quilt so closely.

It is a simple quilt that doesn’t even need a pattern if you have already quilted, but I learned so much from Elizabeth’s clear instructions: choosing fabrics, using a rotary cutter, piecing, pressing, sandwiching, free-motion quilting, applique, mitered corners and binding.

The focus fabric is Alexander Henry’s 2-D Zoo and the green fabric is Robert Kauffman Linen Essex. It measures 40″ square and the back is…

… cuddly, soft, minky! I love that the minky was added after the quilting was done, but man, is it stretchy and saggy. Here is one of my original posts from 2009 where I blog the process and list all the fabrics in the quilt.

The quilt hung over my son’s bed for about 3 years (and 2 different houses) until one day he asked if I could take it down for him.

Now it’s one of the quilts he sleeps under each and every night (the other quilt in the photo is blogged and I made it from charm squares that I won from Alyce!). I actually managed to get him to pose for this photo. He LOVES his quilts and he loves helping me make new ones.

Thanks for letting me share my first quilt, Alyce!

Congratulations Janice, it’s lovely anyway!! Such gorgeous colours for a little man. A reminder that 100% of all sales from my Tea For Two pattern in February will be donated to my sister and her husband. It is only fitting, given the cover quilt was to be Ariella’s.