I joined the 'Made from the heart' 3 day episode on day two. I was super excited to learn how to make quilts. I've seen many of Miss White's impressive quilts and wanted to attempt one, but they are quite daunting to me. I began the day a little worried my sewing skills wouldn't be up to scratch.
What I started with.
I found making the first block of my wonky log cabin quilt a little confusing because I kept forgetting where I should be adding my new piece of fabric. Once I had the first block made it was pretty easy to make the rest because I used the same colours, so I could refer back to the first one and I figured out I should be adding my new pieces to the right of the piece I had just sewn on. Miss White also gave me a great tip about using a pin to mark the first patch of the block.
The beginnings of my first ever quilt block.
Making the quilt blocks took quite a bit of persevering. It took me all day to make 6 blocks - that's a lot of time at a sewing machine! While I was making them I thought I was going quite fast, but then you complete one and realise you still have 4 more to go!
I had to show a little bit of resilience today too. When it came to squaring up my blocks I found one was slightly too small. I had to sew on a little bit more fabirc to fix it. I didn't have much material left so I just used another scrap piece. However, if I had more material and wasn't pushing myself to get all the blocks finished in one day I would have unpicked some of the block and made my 'logs' wider.
I finished the day by starting to piece and sew together my blocks into the top of the quilt. I am really excited to get back to it tomorrow because I think I will be able to finish my quilt. It's been really fun and interesting seeing what everyone else had been making too - they all look really great and their work acts as motivation to keep going.
My progress at the end of the day.
DAY 2:
Go, go, go! Sew, sew, sew!
The race was on to get my quilt finished. I started with having to sew all the blocks together - this was pretty quick and easy. Then I had to stick the batting, back and front together, which was no problemo. Next was machine quilting the diamond pattern over the front. This took me a lot longer than I thought it would. It wasn't hard, it was just time consuming. I also had to unpick one of the lines because it looked a bit bunched up. I finished machine quilting at the start of lunch.
Machine quilting and batting.
Sewing on the border.
After machine quilting I had to sew on the border and hand sew all the way around it. I managed to do this quite quickly as I hand sew quite a bit. This also meant I got everything finished before the end of the day. Wahoo! I completed my first ever quilt! I hope whomever receives it at the hospital likes it and it becomes a keepsake.
Lines have been sprayed off and it is...
Finished!
