Do you remember the first quilt you made? Are you still working on it? Do you still have it? Here’s my first quilt.
There’s a long story about it and how I got started quilting here.
Can you imagine your life without quilting? I can’t! I think about the pleasure and relaxation I get from fondling fabric, and the quilting process. I think of the opportunities quilting has brought my way but most of all I think of the friendships I’ve made through quilting. Vicky grew up probably 5 or 10 miles from me but we never knew each other. Then we met through quilting. My friend, Becky, took classes I taught when I lived in Owensboro and we became buddies. My friend, Elaine, lives in Springfield, MO. We had been internet friends for years and then met at a retreat 5 or 6 years ago; now we live less than 2 hours apart and she’s my chauffeur to get me over the scary bridges in my travels. (It was Becky and Elaine that convinced me to buy the Baby Lock sewing machine too! They both have the same machine.) My friend, Jeanne in Kansas City . . she and I had chatted on the APQS message board for years and when I said I was moving to MO and needed info, she promptly provided me with lots of info and we’re good friends now.
Quilters are the best and the best way to be friends with quilters is to be a quilter so I think I’ll keep quilting for a long time. Not so much for the pleasure of quilting or to get rid of this stash but simply so I can continue to be friends with quilters!
Are most of your friends quilters? I think that’s one of the reasons quilt shows are so much fun . . most everyone there is a quilter.
If I had to guess, I’d say about 99.9% of my blog readers are quilters and I consider all of you my friends too. Steve, you’re not a quilter and you’re not my friend . . you’re my husband’s friend but I need that waffle recipe again . . please!!
pdudgeon says
My first quilts are long gone. the very first one was a brown and white calico crib quilt that i made for my cousin’s grandchild. the quilting and piecing was atrocious but it did have two advantages; it could keep a child warm and make the child look very attractive by contrast. LOL
the next few were a coverlet for the bed in that same blue,mauve, and creme color scheme, a cheater quilt pannel, and a tied 9 patch crib quilt made for my son from some of his father’s old work shirts.
Nancy says
My first quilt still resides on my son’s bed. It is a full size log cabin in all light and dark blues. I was really proud that all the fabric had some kind of star in it…LOL I was really matchy matchy back then…..
CJ says
What a great post Judy, I agree quilters are the best!
I have my first quilt ever made, I never bound it until this year (didn’t know how back then!) and it’s in our living room.
Rona says
My first quilt hangs in my office. It is doll size and a sampler. It was the first test as to if I could put the pieces together and make it look decent. It has been in every office that I have had since 1997. My husband is retired Navy so I have had a few offices in the past few years.
Kathleen says
I still have my first quilt. The binding is ragged and the fabric is faded, but I know exactly where it is 🙂 All my close freinds are quilters and they are coming over today to sew with me like we do every Tuesday. And if they don’t quilt, they sure love what I do because I love to share my quilts.
Glenda in Florida says
I finished my undergraduate degree in December 1983. Most of my friends in my weekly stitching groups had been moving from counted cross stitch to quilting during that last year that I was in school, so I continued my education by taking a quilting class starting in January 1984. It was for a quilt each block as you go sampler, very similar to your first quilt. I decided to make extra blocks as well, so I wasn’t finished with them by the time we moved 4 months later. Every once in a while I get it out and work on it–I’m still hand quilting the borders, though I haven’t worked on it in many years. When it is finished, it won’t fit any bed in my house, but I do home to finish it someday….
In the mean time, I’ve made quite a few other quilts, and done lots of chairty quilting. I recently helped a friend bind her first. It only took her two years–I’m on year 26 now!
Amanda says
My first quilt I made for my 3rd child when she was born for her crib. I didn’t think that much about it; it was just a cover for her crib, and I gave it to Good Will. So, my first big quilt is a Quilt in a Day log cabin. I still have it, but it still needs binding. It has cheaters cloth in it, but I didn’t know what cheaters cloth was, and I thought it looked pretty.
Yes, I love my quilting friends. I am so glad that you are not only a blogging quilting friend, but a friend in real life, too.
Amanda
Howdy says
The very first I made was a small bug jar quilt… and I quilted it myself with invisible thread… before I ever knew what or how to do it. Sometimes ignorance is bliss – I think of that quilt whenever I’m hesitant to try something.
Since our move here – If it weren’t for my virtual quilty friends that I’ve met through my blog and others – well I’d have gone nuts long ago. I’m just now starting to get out and around… but the internet really is a big part of my sanity… and the reason I haven’t cleaned my kitchen yet… LOL
yvette says
My first quilt was made 2 1/2 yrs ago and is still my favorite. I was given a rotary cutter, mat and book from my aunt on her death bed. After she died I decided to give it a try. I studied that book and made a scrappy log cabin. I’ll bet that none of the seams are a perfect quarter inch and none of the blocks were squared up but somehow it became a quilt. I made 2 other quilts from books and then took my first quilt class. I am so hooked it is ridiculous. I have made the greatest friends from visiting quilt shops and taking classes. I couldn’t see my life now without this tremendous hobby.
Stephanie says
I had dreamed of making quilts since the 70s, but the continuing ed class I took way back then was pretty useless. Mid-90s, hubby gave me a hand quilting class for Christmas, and I made a sampler lap quilt for DD. I named it “College Blues”, as she had graduated high school and started college and I was missing her. She still has it–and a couple other of my early mistake-ridden efforts.
Judy says
My first quilts were not considered quilts. They were baby blankets. 🙂 Quilts covered “big” beds. My first quilt class was a quilt as you go blue and yellow log cabin in the late 70s. That quilt lived on out bed for years.
Most of my good friends are quilters. There are a few that just don’t get it though but I am keeping them as friends.
I sure hope you are going to share Steve’s Waffle recipe–I love waffles.
Carol Harper says
My first “quilt” was a red, white and blue sampler which as hand pieced as the project for the first class I took (in Saudi Arabia) but it was never quilted (sad to say, but I never “learned” to actually quilt, patly because the machine I owned then was so basic that it made machine quilting nigh on to impossible for a beginner).
I still have it in my stash along with all the other unquilted tops I made in classes there, and now I have a Bernina Quilter’s Edition so one day…
You are right about quilters being good friends. One of my best friends is a “former” quilter (my other best friend has converted her, and me, to papercrafting but she still has a quilter’s soul)!
Mary Crowther says
My first quilt was a Rail Fence flannel in full size that my friend helped me cut out with Scissors back in the late 70’s. I bought the fabric at JC Penney and it was clipped by one of those machines, then torn. I was still in High School. It was tied not quilted and it is on our guest bed for the winter months. I’ve had to replace pieces of flannel on the worn parts. I did that by hand. We’ve come a LONG LONG way fellow quilters. I did my first BOM in 1993. That’s when I consider my real beginning of this hobby and making quilty friends.
Vicky says
My first quilt was a blue/beige/pink triple rail. That was Sept 2001. It’s not the prettiest quilt in the world, but it’s real special to me!
Magdalen says
Judy — My best waffle recipe is the raised waffle recipe in OLD (i.e., ca. 1970s) copies of Fannie Farmer. My second best recipe involed leftover white rice — it adds a nice texture to the waffles. But the raised waffles are to die for: incredibly light and crispy.
Diana Wilson says
My first quilt is a sampler too, only in peach and mint green and black and tan. (can you say EEEEWW?) I still have it and it still is unquilted. I plan to finish it in the next year or so. If I can stomach it.
Sharon says
Yes I still have my first quilt. It is on the back of my couch. It was a sampler much like yours all in green and yellow sunflower prints. The book I used to learn How to Quilt said “all your blocks should finish 12 1/2 inches” yeah right. Dream on. Learned a lot of lessons on that quilt. I hand quilted the entire thing. Bought myself a walking foot pretty quick after that. I love it though because I can look at it and see how far I have come. I only have one friend at church that quilts so it gets pretty lonely some times.
Sue H says
My first quilted project was a pillow for a baby’s room I did in the ’70s for a friend’s baby. Loved that pillow — tumbling blocks in yellow and green. I didn’t take a picture, and I’m sure it only resides in my memory any more. My first bed quilt was when I took a community-ed class with friend Mary. It was a Trip Around the World quilt, rotary-cut strips, and it was either two or three Saturdays. I still have it and use it, and I’ll pull it out today and put a picture on my blog. Thanks, Judy, for all the fun memories!
Rosemary says
What a lovely question.
It seems all quilters have a very special nostalgia for their first quilting efforts.
I came into quilting wanting to perfect fabric frames for silk paintings as made in Japan.There ia something amazingly serene about their pristine precision.
It wasn’t long before any idea of framing went out the window and the pure unadulterated joy or quilt creativity swept over my like an unstoppable wave and has never left.
Arn’t we so luck to enjoy and share our quilting passion.
Pam says
I hate to admit it, but my first quilt is MIA. There wasn’t enough quilting in it to keep the batting from splitting so it got set aside to be fixed — just as soon as I could figure out how. Fast forward 10-15 years and now I’m confindant I can fix the quilt but can’t find it!
Jill says
My first quilt was a twin sized red, white & blue Trip Around the World. Though I didn’t know the name, or use a pattern when I made it. I just cut squares and then laid them out on my floor until I liked it. I still use the quilt all time for wrapping up in when it’s chilly in my house. It originally was tied and had a cotton batting, but it wasn’t tied closely enough to keep that from shifting, so I took it apart a few years ago and machine quilted a new batting in.
Karen L says
Let’s see….my first quilt……I now use it to cover the tomato plants in the fall to keep from freezing……..but it wasn’t much of a quilt……just squares……out of polyester double knit………….even using it for tomato cover hasn’t hurt it one bit…I do feel sorry for it occasionally and bring it in and wash it up……..it looks good as new!!!!!
About that fondling fabric thing…….actually, if you think back we have always played with fabric……our first sensation with life was our mother’s touch…..but our second sensation was when the nurse took us away from our mother and wrapped us in a nice soft piece of cotton cloth………how can we not have a desire to be close to fabric!!!!
Karen L
Deb says
My first quilt is still with me. It is used on the couch seat for the dogs. It is a Yellow Brick Road (I havent been quilting very long-8 years). It was quilted with mono thread, and I still hate that thread to this day! I already think it needs to be put to rest, but some still like it!
And for those of you like JUDY, who have those mauve and blue quilts-they are COMING BACK in style! First the 70’s were back, no the 80’s! I am getting too old!
Ruth says
I moved to a new country 3 years ago. All of my friends here (outside of people I know from work) are quilters.
I love my sewing group. Interestingly I haven’t met many quilters under 40 here, so my bests friends are my mother’s and grandmother’s age. It doesn’t matter though because through quilting I have more in common with them than with many other people I meet.