grasshopper

Completely new to quilting. I recall seeing my mother and grandmother sometimes quilting as a child, but it was more about keeping the cold away then the simple beauty of the quilts themselves.

Personally I love crafting of all sorts, but have never really been bitten by the bug to keep digging other then in my herb garden.

Several years ago, yes years, I purchased a booklet "Learn to quilt" making a sampler quilt of 12 different blocks. Now this was while I was working at a high stress job, and other then the booklet, some fabrics and thread. I didn't really make any other purchases. I mean after all I already had a sewing machine and scissors, and what if I didn't like it, right? Well I managed to machine piece together all of the blocks, and even string those together. Then either I got busy, bored or confused and everything went into box never to be seen again until just last week.

It all started because walking around the local Walmart I saw some fat quarters with elephants on them. My daughter is crazy about elephants, and I started thinking am no longer working and she would really enjoy a nice throw with those cute little elephants in there... hey I could even throw in a few pink elephants. She'd really get a kick out of seeing pink elephants... it's an inside mother/daughter joke between us. Anyway I ended up buying 12 or so matchy, matchy fat quarters which made me go looking for that long lost booklet to get ideas for the elephant throw. Found the booklet and the forgotten quilt top which I thought I should finish. Went to the store and purchased some batting and have begun putting it together.

Here's what I've discovered about myself, my first attempt at quilting and my limited quilting equipment. First I obviously can't cut with scissors as straight as I thought I could; a rotary cutter has to be much better (please chime in here, I obviously could use some guidance). Either I was attempting to sew too fast and simply not giving much care to seam allowances or my poor cutting quality was the root cause because something just isn't square on the finished quilt top. Trying to piece together a full/queen quilt on a dining room table as a beginner is insane. The floor is even worst when you have back problems. Lastly my sewing machine which is just a little singer is simply not made for attempting to machine quit a rather large quilt; there just isn't room for all the fabric and batting.

I have to admit that I'm frustrated and am not finding finishing the quilt nearly as fun as it probably should be, so if you have any words of wisdom I would greatly appreciate them.

Yours truly a frustrated grasshopper.