Friday, August 08, 2014

Quilty Flashback Friday: Pinwheels and Prairie Points

I'm linking up with Elizabeth at Don't Call Me Betsy for Quilty Flashback Friday! What a fun idea!

I made my first quilt 5 years ago this month. I'd been toying with the idea of making a quilt and my friend Kim was encouraging me to. When I found out one of my mom's co-workers was having a baby, and another co-worker gave me a charm set of Moda Oh-Cherry-Oh fabric by Me and My Sisters Designs, well that sealed the deal and I jumped in!

Kim found a Moda Bake Shop pattern for me and I went to it. I'd been sewing apparel and other projects since junior high, so the hardest part about quilting was that a 1/4 inch seam seemed so incredibly small!



It's kind of amazing how much I learned from the mistakes in this quilt. You can see that I reversed a few of the pinwheels, so you can bet I am very careful when I make them now. I did pretty well on the prairie points but haven't made them since then. And the quilting? Oh the quilting! I went to Montavilla Sewing Center and asked for a quilting foot. They sold me a walking foot. I assumed it was a free motion foot and attempted to do some meandering. Hilarity ensued. I didn't realize until much later that I had the wrong foot. Ha!


This is what a first time quilter trying to free motion with a walking foot looks like!



I'm still not sure that I've recovered from that mistake and rarely free motion now, but I do have the proper foot for it!



I made a fairly wide binding and chose to not make it continuous or mitered. I think that was a good choice, it's ok to do some things the easy way when you're learning! Overloading on trying to do everything "right" is a good way to burn out.

So, here I am a few years later. I'm not a master quilter, but I've improved so much, and I'm even President of the largest Modern Quilt Guild. Not bad for someone who free motioned a quilt with a walking foot five years ago!

4 comments:

Yvonne from Quilting Jetgirl said...

Wow, it sounds like you knew a lot more about quilting than I did when I got started. At least you tried to FMQ - I didn't even know FMQing on a home machine was even possible until I had made dozens of quilts.

Anonymous said...

I love that you were brave enough to do prairie points and try FMQ on your first ever quilt! Wow!

Elizabeth Dackson said...

You know, the pinwheel flips and such totally work - I didn't even notice them until you pointed them out!!! I love seeing how little we knew when we started quilting in these posts, and yet how gung ho we were all the same. Thanks so much for sharing at Quilty Flashback Friday, I hope you enjoyed digging out some quilty memories :)

AnnMarie said...

What a great post! I would have never guessed you made your first quilt five years ago and with prairie points to boot! Way to go and thanks for being our president!!!