My friend, Mary, just completed quilting her first quilt and is ready to put the binding on it. She's my age, and has just developed an interest in quilting. Who am I to discourage her? haha. She did a great job on it.
I remember my first quilt. The year I graduated high school I was in the old department store, Zayre. Anyone remember Zayre stores? The one by us was kind of junky, but it was all we had around at the time. Zayre had a fabric section and on a whim I decided I wanted to make a quilt. I bought four different fabrics that somewhat coordinated - all of them had a lot of white background. They each had tiny flowers, one with yellow, one with red, and two different blue ones.
I decided it was just going to be all squares, randomly set but no two of the same pattern touching. I made a big graph of the pattern and followed it. The squares were drawn from a cereal box template and cut with scissors.
My grandmother and I quilted it by hand, quilting a diamond in each square and along either sides of the seams. We used hand quilting thread, white in the red and yellow flowered squares and blue in the blue flowered squares. The batting was polyester and the backing was a light blue sheet. I put lace, of all things, all around the edges to finish it!
I still have the quilt, although it is so worn you can see through it in places. It is big enough to cover my king size bed, so it is occasionally used underneath the newer quilts, just for some layered warmth.
Who knew that chance stop at the Zayre fabric counter would lead to a life long love of quilting? I'd love to hear your story about your first quilt. Leave a comment if you feel so inclined... :)
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