In the Beginning
This is the quilt that started my love of piecing and my desire to become a longarm quilter. I was the second quilt I ever made.
I started quilting because I was bored, kind of. In 2015 the engine on my beloved Jeep died. We decided to have it rebuilt. That took four months. We lived in the country and my husband needed the car for his commute to the city. That left me confined to home over the winter. Like many others, I found quilting by watching Jenny Doan on YouTube. I made a simple jelly roll quilt successfully so I couldn’t resist trying something more challenging.
I would send my husband to Joann Fabrics with my list of “demands”. The ladies there would help him fill my order. It was great. He picked out the fabric and jelly roll for the project and started his career as my quilting enabler.
Here is what I learned:
- It is good to have an exit plan. I just kept sewing blocks, blocks and more blocks. By the time I decided to sew it together the quilt was 95 x 105.
- Make sure you leave 1/4″ seam allowance or your points will get chopped off. Most of them in this quilt are, but I still love it.
- Trying to fit a King-sized quilt into the neck of a Costco special sewing machine (8-inch neck) can be done, but that didn’t mean I had to.
- Using the services of a longarm quilter was a huge time savings and freed up time for more projects!
