Dipping My Toe Into The World Of Quilting
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:
