My grandma taught me to sew when I was in fourth grade.
I remember my first project was a jumper for my county fair 4-H project.
For days before the fair my dad or mom would drive me into
town and I would spend the day with my grandma, learning to sew.
Grandma sewed most of my clothes as I was growing up.
There were some outfits that I made, too.
That was at least 30 (ahem..more than 30) years ago.
And I still have fabric from many of those outfits.
Recently I made a quilt for our
Soon-To-Be-Born Grandbaby Claire
from fabrics I used to wear.
It is somewhat embarrassing to say that the
pink and white checked material in this
picture were pants I made in seventh or
eighth grade. The solid pink fabric was a
matching blazer that I wore with the pants.
Wild outfit!
There are a lot of memories for me in this quilt.
I remember my first project was a jumper for my county fair 4-H project.
For days before the fair my dad or mom would drive me into
town and I would spend the day with my grandma, learning to sew.
Grandma sewed most of my clothes as I was growing up.
There were some outfits that I made, too.
That was at least 30 (ahem..more than 30) years ago.
And I still have fabric from many of those outfits.
Recently I made a quilt for our
Soon-To-Be-Born Grandbaby Claire
from fabrics I used to wear.
It is somewhat embarrassing to say that the
pink and white checked material in this
picture were pants I made in seventh or
eighth grade. The solid pink fabric was a
matching blazer that I wore with the pants.
Wild outfit!
There are a lot of memories for me in this quilt.
Flowers were blanket-stitched onto the quilt top.
The top of a quilt, in this case the patchwork squares,
are joined with a middle layer of quilt batting and
a bottom layer of fabric by either machine or hand stitching
or tying the layers together.
I opted to try machine stitching but my practicing of
fancy scrollwork often seen on quilts was
just awful. Well, it wasn't just awful,
it was terrible. The instructional videos I watched
stressed practice, practice, practice and now
I know why!
Google search saved the day for me.
I searched for machine quilting ideas and
found a website that showed straight-stitch quilting.
Sewing rows and rows of stitching...straight lines.
Score...I can do that!
As I sewed line after line I felt like a farmer
plowing row after row in a field. There was
progress being made with each row but there
were so many more rows to go!
What a fun time I had with this project.
The best part is yet to come...watching Baby Claire
drool and hopefully snuggle with this blankie.
