This Quilter's Journey, Part 2

This is the second installment of my quilting journey.  You can read part 1 here.  The first several posts will be about a single quilt,as they were fewer when I began quilting. Later on, some of the quilts will be grouped together in a single post.  This is the story of my first "real" quilt.

 

.  I started getting books from the library on quilting when I would take my kids to the library.  This was 1992 and Georgia Bonesteel had a few books out about lap quilting.  I checked them out over and over and poured through them.  I checked out any other quilting books as well.  I liked Georgia’s method, since I didn’t have a frame to stretch a large quilt on.

When I felt ready, like I could really handle this, I bought a cutting mat, rotary cutter and ruler and some fabric.  I had designed a quilt that could be made and quilted in squares with the lap quilting method.  It took me about a year to make this queen size quilt.  Now I am stubborn and tenacious, as my husband can tell you, but looking back I was clueless too.

My first “real” quilt was a queen size quilt with tons of half square triangles.  I think I just liked the design.  I bought the fabric in calicos of dark green, dark blue and a sort of burgundy color.  I didn’t pre-wash and the green has since bled onto the adjoining muslin.  That’s another notion I had, that all quilts should have some muslin in them.

 I hand quilted it in squares and joined them together.  Oh, and I wanted it to be hefty, so double batting.  I don’t know where that crazy idea came from.  That is one heavy quilt.  I think I had so many comforters over the years that were store bought and very fluffy, I must have thought that was a good thing. That quilt was on our bed for years and we still have it.  I signed the back with my name and the year, 1993.

 This is the quilt, today. Sorry that it is rainy and overcast, so the lighting isn't great. This quilt spent a lot of years on our queen size waterbed.

 It is very lumpy due to the double layers of a poly batting I used, and all hand quilted by my untrained hands.

 The points don't match up in many places due the the way the blocks were joined together. I understood the concept, but it was tough to execute.

 You can see here on the back how the green fabric bled when washed. I don't remember pre-washing these fabrics.

My sharpie signature

 The corners of the quilt, once I figured out the border.  All quilts had borders back then.

And here you can see how worn it is. It is dirty and stained in places too.  I still have a soft spot in my heart for this old quilt, my first creation.  See you soon for another installment.