My first quilt (technically)

Thought I'd post my very first quilt! I got interested in quilting in 1989 and decided to make my first quilt for my daughter Amanda (called Mandy at that time). I hadn't heard of rotary cutters and rulers and cutting boards, so jumped in with the Sister's Choice block; polyester fabrics and scissors!! Oh, and it had double narrow sashings around each block with four patch corner stones! It took four years before I had it finished, but finish it I did! We bought a whole bolt of the backing fabric as the price was right and we made curtains, covered a chair and made all kinds of accents for the room. While I was making the quilt, I ended up in a Quilt shop and they advertised Quilt in a Day classes. This was a novel idea! I took the class just to see if it was true. I learned about rotary cutters and cotton fabric there! I finished this quilt using a rotary cutter instead of scissors. I just asked my daughter in law for a picture of my son's first quilt. That was the first quilt I finished, but technically, this is my first quilt :-). Here is a picture of Amanda's favourite block. The blue fabric was from "Aunt Eva's pregnant overalls" as we called them :-). Each block had different fabrics in the 9 patches and they were all from fabrics I used to make Amanda's clothing...a real memory now. "Remember that dress? Remember that shirt?" :-)


I bought a label and embroidered it with name and date:


Here is the full quilt pictured on Amanda's clothes line. I did prairie points around the whole outside edge and remember vowing that I would never make prairie points again! I am to the point now that I don't remember the agony and am tempted to do them again :-)!! This quilt was also tied.

Sorry, I can't remember where I got the pattern, so I can't credit the designer. It's too long ago!

Ethan's Quilt

Baby Ethan's Mom, Jennifer, asked for a raggy quilt! They are a lot of fun to make and we chose the fabrics to match the bumper pad in his crib.

Here is Ethan sleeping peacefully with his new quilt :-).

I quilted this design in the red and blue squares and a diamond pattern in the yellow squares. The biggest job of these rag quilts is clipping the seams. Again, this quilt was pieced and quilted on the trusty 15-88 Singer treadle machine.

Lemon Braid Quilt

I took a class at the Quilt Rack in Ancaster where I worked for two years. It was taught by Jackie Syers and based on the Friendship Braid Quilt from the book, "Open a Can of Worms" by Debbie Caffrey. This is a really fun pattern. I already posted a picture earlier of another one that I made for my niece's wedding, but this was the first quilt I did from this pattern. Lucy Rowntree, the owner of the Quilt Rack, quilted this quilt on her long arm machine for me for Christmas. She did a wonderful job on the quilt! I made the quilt for my husband, Jake, since I never made him a quilt yet. Lucy chose 'teacher' fabric for the backing since Jake is a teacher. I picked music notes for the binding as he is one of the organists in our Church :-).

This is the backing of the quilt showing some of the lovely quilting.

The quilting on the front:

Ben and Heather's Quilt

Here is Ben posing with the quilt I made for him and Heather for their wedding June 2nd, 2007. His arms weren't long enough to hold the complete quilt out! This quilt is huge..90" x 113". It is from a pattern in McCall's Quick Quilting July 2001, called "Starlight" by Janet Jones Worley. We added more borders to make it queen sized. It is completely pieced and quilted on my trusty Singer 15-88 treadle.


Closeup of the motif quilted in each block.


Free motion leaf quilting in the green and blue borders:


The quilting on the back. I quilted it with blue thread on the back so there wouldn't be a chance of yellow popping up through that dark navy blue. The loop quilting on the narrow yellow border was done with yellow in the bobbin.


The label: