DESI QUILTERS: First Quilts

Friday, 7 December 2012

First Quilts - DQ Sunita

(Guest post by DQ Sunita, the 8th in our series of 'First Quilts')

Dear DQs,

I am here today to share my very first quilt experience.The first quilt I made was for the second love of my life. (First one being obvious).

It is called "Spring Chick Cot Quilt" by Janet Goddard.

I must say that I was heavily inspired by the group "Desi Quilters". I watched what others were doing for a few days and then took a plunge. Even though I was an avid sewer and took sewing lessons for children, I had never quilted. Everyone at DQ is very encouraging and generous with their appreciations. I advice any new bees to participate, show their work and ask questions, take suggestions and there will be no looking back.

Anyway back to my first project. I made this on my Usha Janome 'Stitch Magic'. I used fabric from my stash. The original quilt was in bright yellow but since I did not have any, I used mustard instead. I did all the cutting with scissors as I did not own a mat and rotary cutter then. Plus I did want to know how it felt to do it with basic tools. Well to be honest it wasn't as hard as I had thought. ( I guess because I hadn't used the advanced tool then, its going back to basics that is difficult I think). There are six Chicks that are all machine appliqued. This is where I learnt my first machine appliqueing. It got better with each chick. A total of six blocks and the finished size is 38" by 52".

The top was pretty simple and took me just a few days time. I hand basted the quilt as I did not own good quality quilting pins. After the basting, I machine quilted with the regular foot since I do not own a walking foot as yet. I just did straight line quilting with no free motion quilting. In the end I added the 2.5" on fold binding with mitred corners.

This one will always be special as it will always remain my first. So here it is the "Chick quilt".

My advice to new bees is start with a small quilt, like a baby quilt. Big quilts in the first go can be daunting. Don't think that you can't quilt if you don't have rotary and a cutting mat and hordes of other expensive quilting items. Use left over fabric at home, do a project or two and figure out if you have the patience and the love for this craft to make further investments, both in terms of money and time.