The Way of a Couple of Quilts…

When I’m not looking after B&B guests, I do many things in my spare time: Painting, sewing, cooking…. and I tend to choose the complicated version…

Some things though are really beyond nuts. Get a book out entitled: Dear Pam Teach Me Your Quick Quilting Techniques and choose a quilt that has 3,885 pieces in it to fit a Queen Size bed.

My first task was set: My first quilt. I should have started with a cushion cover maybe? Anyway, I got down to it,  decided that I would do a mix and match of Guatemalan fabrics and other bits of fabrics that I had put away because I was one day going to do something with them….

Once I got all the initial pieces of coloured fabrics put together which I did with the sewing machine, the next task was to place it on batting and choose a fabric to back it with, put it on some sort of stretcher and start quilting.

Problem. The whole thing was way too thick to quilt which is the simple technique of going in and out and doing a nice neat little running stitch around each piece.

It took me a while to decide on how I was going to join the three layers and when I did, I decided to do french knots. How pretty is that? You run your hand over the quilt and you get a textural happening as well as the colour happening for the eyes.

Excellent, well, maybe. It took two years to finish all those French knots and one year after that for my daughter to announce that she is getting married. Mazeltov!! This is what quilts are for, you make them and they get handed down and hopefully she will hand this down to one of her children one day.

In the meantime…I have two more kids and the second quilt is on its way from decorating the living room to going onto my bed until it’s time to give it to the second child and then plan on making the third quilt. By that time I will be a very old woman!

By the way, this second blue quilt only has 3,550 pieces to it. Hopefully, the second child will not feel that this quilt is any less than the first…