First Quilts - DQ Manju

(Guest post by DQ Manju, the 6th in our series of 'First Quilts')

My First Quilt

My mother used to sew beautifully and do a lot of fine embroidery and I grew up seeing a lot of clothes being stitched and a lot of patchwork quilts being made. Sewing always fascinated me and I got a chance to play with it when I grew up. But the quilt bug caught me only after we landed in the USA about twelve years ago.

Quilting is big time over here and the different blocks that you can create just amazes me. The art quilts … ah! One of my big dreams is to make a half decent art quilt !

So a bit after settling down in our new home I visited a fabric store and they were starting a fresh quilt group for newbies…a block a month. You take a packet, they give you instructions to make the block, you show your completed block the next month and they give you the next block. So in twelve months we learnt to make 12 different blocks and they did give another class for binding and finishing the quilt, which I unfortunately missed!

So the first quilt I ever made was a sampler quilt with the American colours – red, white and blue. Adding my touch to the quilt I did a bit of satin ribbon embroidery on the border.



This quilt is gifted to my first born and I think it has been pretty well used. The quilting part is not well done on this one as I neither knew how to do it nor how and where to get it done so brought it back to ‘apanee Dilli’ and the local razai walla made a hash of it.

Though I did make it about 10 /11 years ago my quilting was lying dormant for a number of years and it has come out of hibernation only recently!

Also I love belonging to my Desi Quilters group and airing my quilting urge.

~Manju