Jill’s Jumble

This little project was started when I was in the 7th grade.  Somehow there was a free period that the teachers used to teach us about various hobbies they all had.  We had some choice about it so I was very exciting to learn something about quilting from the French teacher.  She brought in fabrics and a selection of quilt block patterns. I love the Card Trick block:

The block itself is hand stitched though I did use the machine to turn it into a pillow.  It’s in pretty good condition considering it’s nearly 20 years old, huh?

I have to admit I’m not a prolific quilter.  I started this quilt for Evan in August of 2006, about two months before he was even born.  Piecing it really didn’t take very long.

I wanted to do more curved quilting on it to emphasize the pinwheels like I had in the quilt pictured in the previous post.  Only I was intimidated at the thought of doing it by machine.  In the intervening time, I did managed to get the right feet for machine quilting.  I discovered that the curves were a bit much for the walking foot so I had to get over my fear of free motion quilting.  I am unfortunately a bit of a perfectionist so I don’t tend to like my efforts while I’m still getting used to something new.  Eventually, knowing that Evan’s birthday was coming up I just pushed through my anxiety and got it done!

The second picture shows the quilting a bit better, even though it’s a bit blurry.

My first foray into quilting was in middle school. The various teachers held classes in their hobbies. I chose to attend my French teacher’s class on quilts. I don’t remember very many details as it was nearly twenty years ago. But I did piece a pillow by hand using the Card Trick block pattern. I wish I could find that pillow to show you a picture of it.

I have to admit that brown, orange, and green aren’t a particularly favorite color theme of mine but that’s what I ended up with. It was a small pillow too. Maybe 9×9?

My next start to a quilt was during the last quarter of eighth grade. The home economics teacher taught quilting! I was very ambitious and thought I’d make myself a full size Irish Chain quilt. Well, it’s not actually finished yet!

Easter 2005, I did pull it out and figure out what to do with the start I’d made. It’s now in two parts, a pieced top with borders awaiting sandwiching, and the preemie quilt pictured here. It’s been donated to a local hospital.

I cut my Nine Patch blocks in four and rearranged them to create this pattern. The technique is called Disappearing Nine-Patch. I loved the little pinwheels this particular arrangement created so I tried to emphasize them with my quilting. The curved lines are hand quilted while the straight lines are done by machine. At the time I didn’t even have a walking foot to do those straight lines, never mind a free motion foot for the kind of curved lines I wanted! Here’s an image of the back to get a better idea of what I did with the quilting: