My First (Completed) Quilt

With late-life motherhood came an abundance of...free time! Well, not *free* exactly, but no longer was I working 40-60 hours a week teaching high school english or writing copy to promote music festivals, or raising money to put on said music festivals, etc. So, round about the time Hayden was 6 months old, I got the notion to start sewing. I had my grandma's Singer Featherweight, but no manual and no parts. Those had somehow been lost in the transfer between my mom, my sister and myself. Although I could find out the exact date of birth of my machine on the internet, I couldn't find a manual, and since I didn't know how to thread the machine - I was stuck! Stuck until I wrote some nice lady in Texas (whose address I did get from the internet) and she sent me a xeroxed copy of the manual. I was off and running!

My very fist quilt was an unlovely fence rail which annoyed me to no end once I got it done. There was an olive green in a paisley print that I could not overlook. Plus, this first quill suffered from numerous misaligned seams and so was relegated to the bottom of a drawer.

For this, my second quilt, I chose the fabrics with care, and settled quickly on a scrappy nine patch pattern. I learned how to set my blocks on point, and machine-quilted it all myself. I actually love the way it came out. Although I had intended it for a crib quilt for Hayden, it never quite made it there. Now, it still hangs on the wall of my second lil' darling's baby room - a room we still have yet to find a use for (except for storing the dozen or so finished quilts and quilt tops!)