My First Quilt

The first quilt I made was a present for my Mum's 60th birthday (in May 2012).  My Mum loves blues and greens so this was to influence my palette choice.  I also wanted the quilt to be used at my parent's holiday chalet in France where my Mum has all her table and glass ware in lovely shades of turquoise. The chalet is somewhere we all love holidaying, it's right by the river, and we all enjoy the birds and other wildlife we see from the verandah.

When choosing fabrics I found myself drawn to florals and leaves and birds and even found a fabric that had a small 'tricolour' flag and an anchor on it.  I decided (thankfully!) to make it a lap quilt, I think retrospectively anything else would have been madness with no experience!

Here are a few of the blocks before the quilt top was assembled;

This block is Barbara Frietchie's Star & was made (except the blue floral) from old shirts.

This block is a Pierced Star & used a lovely batik along with the turquoise dotty fabric.

This block is called 'Susannah' and here you can see the French/Nautical fabric I was pleased to find.

When all the blocks were complete (along with the blocks seen, I also used an 'Anvil', 'Stars & Stripes', 'Puss in the Corner', 'King's Crown', 'Evening Star', 'Flyfoot', 'Crosses & Losses', 'Star of Le Moyne' and 'Flock of Geese'), one of our cats Boogle gave his approval to the proposed layout and a good sniff, so I was then ready to start assembling the quilt.

It is worth recalling that in the last few months before my Mum's birthday I was newly pregnant with Elias our first child and also working full time.  There were a few fraught and tearful telephone conversations with Vanessa my Mother in Law who did her best to reassure me as I struggled with my first attempt at quilting!

I chose a lovely batik in muted greens and turquoise to be the backing fabric.  Instead of binding I then wrapped the backing fabric round to make a sort of frame.  My memory goes a bit hazy at this point (possibly the stress!), but I then really enjoyed choosing things to quilt on the borders like a Mother Duck being followed by two ducklings.

Below is the finished article;

It wasn't perfect but it is loved and used all the time (Mum and Sasha the dog take their daily nap on the verandah on or under it depending on the weather!) and that, I think is about all you can hope for with a quilt.