BKrenning

We had just spent a good deal of money on a fancy bedroom suite around 2003 and I wanted a quilt for it but didn't like the Walmart "puffy" ones nor the limited selection of colors. I wanted something more like machine pieced & hand tied ones I remembered my grandmother making in the early 70's and one my mother often used on her bed that grandma had given her for her high school graduation (early 60's) and I figured that if my grandmother could do it 40+ years before, it should be even easier now. I wanted a Grandmother's Flower Garden for our bed but soon realized that I might not live long enough to finish hand cutting & piecing a bazillion 2" hexagons into a king size quilt.

So then I decided to make something smaller and had some calico cat fabric I had bought many years before to make dresses for my daughter so I picked out a pattern from McCall's website, made cardboard templates and started tracing it all out on fabric and cutting it out with scissors. The pattern I had picked out has inset (Y) seams and I had no idea how to sew those on the machine so I started hand piecing it. Then I found the show, "Simply Quilts" and learned about rotary cutters & cutting mats so I bought those. I also figured out how to adjust the pattern to get rid of the inset seams and hubby shamed me into using the sewing machine he had bought for me many years before. Now we were rolling! I whipped out 10 blocks and then we had our first granddaughter so I started making a quilt for her & would switch back & forth between the 2 projects when I got bored or more often, frustrated.

Simply Quilts kept me motivated enough to keep learning & trying. My daughter's Calico Cats quilt turned out fairly well considering I knew almost nothing about constructing a quilt and my granddaughter's quilt was used a wallhanging instead of a quilt or it wouldn't have made it through very many washings. It was a mixture of poly/cotton blends, muslin, cheap flannel & batiste fabrics none of which were prewashed. Then a great niece came along and sew did my quilt making skills so her little quilt looked much better and I decided to make the granddaughter a better one based on an episode of Simply Quilts--the one with Billie Lauder making, "There's a Dog on my Quilt." 6 grandkids, 2 great nieces and 1 great nephew later and I still look forward to making them their bed size quilts, graduation quilts and wedding quilts plus my own children, brother-in-law, sisters, sister-in-law, mother, etc. I love giving them something I made that is useful.