Quilting

Over winter session, I decided I needed a good craft that would keep me occupied for the month that I was home.  I had purchased some Lilly Pulitzer fabric a while back, with the hope of someday having someone make me a quilt.  After attempting to make a belt, by sewing a long strip of fabric onto a belt strap, I realized that sewing can't be too hard, but I definitely could use a teacher. 

As you can see, I definitely needed some sewing help.  There are strings hanging off everywhere!

So, I decided to call my best friends mom to see if she could give me a sewing lesson.  I brought over my mom's sewing machine, and she quickly realized that I did not have my bobbin threaded correctly, which is why I struggled so much to sew on the belt.  I showed her the fabric that I got, and within an hour I was suddenly quilting.  My first step was to lay out the quilt in a pattern, and sew two consecutive squares together...

Day 1 : I learned how to sew 2 squares together

 ...Until it looked like this!

My next lesson, she instructed me to sew into long strips.  This process didn't take too long, except for the ironing.  I learned that the most important part of quilting is making sure that your seams are exactly 1/4 inch, you pin well, and that you press out the seams in the same direction for each strip.

Day 2: my strips are complete!

Next thing I learned was how to sew the strips together.  The only tricky part was making sure that the seams for each alternating row were pressed in the opposite direction, so that they would interlock. That way, your squares are exactly in line (corners match up with corners.)  Once you pin them, sew and then make sure to press all of your seams down again

The inside of the quilt is complete!

My next step was to start my first border.  I wanted to have 2 borders, the first being a 6.5" green border.  My wonderful teacher taught me a great trick... Fabric rips along the seams, so for long strips of fabric, instead of cutting and risking not having perfect lines, cut a little line at 6.5" and then rip the fabric.  You will have to iron the fabric down so that the sides don't curl but you will see that they are perfectly straight!  A very scary thing to do, but AMAZING!  Another important step is when you measure the sides to figure out how long you need your border, the fabric stretches.  So - stretch your fabric to match perfectly, otherwise your quilt won't be perfectly square.

Borders are attached!

Next, I had another row of border I wanted to add with more Lilly fabric.  For this, I had to sew on a diagonal, which was tricky but made the quilt look extra pretty!

 This is my final product.  I don't have pictures of putting on the backing and batting, but that was a long step in the process.  I found out that "quilting" is actually the sewing on top of the blanket, so technically I did not "quilt" until one of the last steps, by sewing diagonally across the squares to keep the batting in place.

I hope you like my finished product! I am so happy with it, and SHOCKED that I was able to accomplish this in a month! I am very proud, but don't know if I see a quilt in my near future (although I know I will do one again some day!)