First Quilts

Bonnie Hunter at Quiltville is linking a whole lot of blogs today, with posts about the first quilt they made.

I have two first quilts. A bit confusing but it is because I was making a sampler in a beginners class, and before I finished that I started another! So My first quilt was kind of my first UFO too!

I started a second project as my Nanna had moved from Tauranga to Wellington. (From warm weather to cold for non New Zealanders). She was feeling the cold so I made her a lap quilt. I managed to made it in a few days, post it off and then continue with my sampler quilt.

You can see it was a simple quilt, that’s why I could run it up in a few days. I hand quilted it too. The white & black floral squares actually came from an old sundress of my mothers, and the red was a poly mix. I remember the poly batting bearding through the black backing fabric. I learnt why there is black batting through that! But with all those white squares maybe it was just as well I didn’t use black batting.

Nanna was a lovely lady who knitted and sewed all her life, so she greatly appreciated that I had handmade something for her. She enjoyed it for about three years before she passed away.


Here’s my sampler quilt that I finished not too long after the class! You can see my teacher taught a wide variety of techniques. There was hand and machine applique, curved piecing, hand piecing, english paper piecing, strip piecing, bargello, etc etc.
I had no idea what colours to use that’s why I did red white & blue. I thought all those flags can’t be wrong! And don’t you love the gingham border! It’s not even quilted, oh well I did learn heaps from making it though. I machine quilted this as I had just bought a walking foot and was keen to use it. Mostly I just quilted in the ditch and outline quilted around the appliques.

If you have enjoyed looking at my first quilts, pop over to Bonnie’s blog to she her first quilt, and all the links to other blogs featuring theirs.