Piecing a Quilt

After learning to stitch on a "cheaters quilt" I was even more desirous of learning to make an actual quilt. For a time between high school and college, I lived with my maternal grandmother. Gram was alwasy making something with fabric or yarn or lace thread. Once again I brought up my wish to learn to make a quilt.

Gram took me into her craft room and let me dig through her fabric scraps. We had decided to make a simple quilt for my first one. It would be made of three inch squares for fabric sewing four of them into a larger square. Each of the larger squares would have two solid and two printed squares.

I wasn't going to make a quilt with a set color pallet. I wanted to use an assortment of colors. Gram's scrapbag was the perfect place to start. Some of the scraps were just big enough to get 2 four inch squares from, some were big enough I could take all the squares I could want.

I ironed the material I selected and took them to the living room to draw my quilt pattern on. It was tedious to draw the patern and cut out the squares, but then I got to sew. I hand sewed the squares together in the four square larger piece, then the piece was set aside as I started my next four square larger piece. Finally I deemed I had enough of the four square pieces to begin to lay out my quilt.

Gram and I pushed the foot stools away and got on our hands and knees to lay them all out. Once we had everything laid out, we stood and looked at what was laid before us. After a few tweeks and shifts the colors were laid out the way I thought looked best. I sewed all the larger squares together and finished the top of my first quilt. Sad to say 20 plus years later, that quilt remains just a top.