A couple months ago I signed up to take a t-shirt quilt making class at Lib's Place. Lib's Place (check it out!) is this great craft, fabric, scrapbooking store about 10 minutes outside of Farmville in Rice, VA that is run by a lady at our church. They have great items and gifts in their shop, but more importantly they hold various classes like sewing, quilting, beading, scrapbooking, cake decorating, scarf making, purse making, card making, etc. It is such a cool thing to have in Farmville!
So, when I decided to sign up for the t-shirt quilting class, I was very excited, but knew I would have to re-learn some of the skills Nanny had taught me. Plus, I had never quilted before so that would be a brand new set of skills! Well, t-shirt quilting is difficult! I found it mainly difficult because it doesn't follow a pattern. Basically you are piecing things together because, for the most part, none of your t-shirt pieces are going to be the same size. What was great about the class (actually 4 or 5 separate classes) is I learned all the basics of quilting! I haven't been able to finish my t-shirt quilt yet, because it's going to be quite large when it's all finished...meaning it takes a long time to make. But, I hope to finish it at some point! As the teacher, Marjo, said, "The first quilt I ever started, I finished 17 years later." Hopefully it doesn't take me that long!
When we found out we were going to have a baby, I knew that I wanted to make something special for her/him. Actually, we have decided that we want lots of things in BB's nursery to be special and/or have a story behind them so we have stories to tell BB when she/he gets older. So, I decided one thing I wanted to make was a baby quilt. So many of the ones you can buy in a store are extremely stereotypically gender specific...all pink with lace, frills, and princesses or all blue with sports, trucks and cars. Since we are doing gender neutral things, I figured making my own quilt would be the best way to go.
A little information about BB's nursery in general:
We are going with something very non-traditional! Our color scheme is gray and orange. This came about because Josh's supervisor and our friend, Angela, went on a mission trip to Uganda in January. One of the things she brought us back was this beautiful painting on fabric of an elephant. The elephant is black and gray and the background is orange. Josh and I both decided it would be the perfect inspiration for a nursery for BB. So, the walls of the nursery will be a light gray and we will have orange accents around the room! Also, we wanted to decorate with animals since the painting is of an elephant and we love animals in general. While we were in Richmond running errands, we stopped at Joanne Fabrics and found the cutest fabric for me to make BB's quilt. They have these things called quilting bundles that are several quarter yards of fabrics that are all different but compliment one another. We got one of those plus a couple yards of an orange fabric we loved to include in the quilt, make the binding of the quilt and hopefully make a window valance and/or crib bumper for BB's room. So when Josh went out of town to Yellowstone helping lead and teach the class of Longwood students, I decided my project would be to make this quilt. And I am so proud to say that I finished it! My first completed quilt, and I even made a continuous bias binding for it (after doing a bunch of calculations, you take a square of fabric and the way you measure, mark, sew and cut it, you end up with one continuous long strip of fabric to bind the edges of the quilt with instead of having to pieces together smaller pieces!). It's not perfect, but I'm still very proud of it.
Here it is!
The backing is the multi-colored stripped fabric that you see in a couple squares here on the front, and it is flannel so it's very soft! We really liked the fabric because its animals, but they are more modern and less baby-ish! What do you think?
Very nice! Enjoy your new skills.
ReplyDelete