Who do you think I am over here?

This internets is amazing. There are so many things that now exist in my life because of someone's blog or some incredible website.

Like quilting.

Come on. Quilting? If you had told me that I would someday be making quilts, I would've been crushed at how much you didn't know me. Quilts, you weirdo?

But you would've known that Denyse Schmidt was just sitting there, waiting patiently for me to fall prey to her modern quilting ways. Waiting for me to buy her book. Waiting for me to say those five magic words that have led me into many a troubling adventure: "How hard can it be?"

Ha ha. Denyse Schmidt knows how hard.

I made her "Too Hot to Handle" oven mitt first. It was cute enough. Not really functional. Too thin to really protect one's hands from oven heat. But cute.


This was ample preparation, I figured, for a quilt. Small projects? Pish! Waste of time. Bring on the quilts! (I conveniently ignored the fact that it once took my partner-in-crime and me six hours to figure out how to put the bobbin in the machine.)

Here's what I was thinking (if you want to call it that): "I know a brand-new bebe who might like a quilt, and a crib-size quilt will be the best 'starter' quilt! I'll make the 'Flock of Triangles' quilt out of this book!"

Hey, why didn't you stop me? Why didn't you tell me what a fool I was to begin with triangles of this nature? Yes, You! The one who knew I'd be quilting someday! Ha-rumph.

I am making a promise to you and to myself right here and now. I shall never sew triangles (or "flying geese" as the fancy quilters like to call them) in this fashion again. I machine-pieced the triangles into rows, just like Denyse's book told me to. I lined up the rows so I could sew them together into a lovely rectangular quilt. And no less than five of these rows of triangles had to be ripped out and re-sewn because they varied in length by as much as two inches. (Ask my partner-in-crime. She'll tell you. She'll laugh a little while she does it, but she'll tell you.)

Oh yes, and I had to make a modification to the quilt-top design because of some fabric miscalculations, so the addition of the dotted fabric makes it kind of like "The Big Zig."

Any-ways, blah blah blah, my first quilt:



Closer view of the hand-quilting and the hand-sewn very tiny binding (edges):



The hand-embroidered label which is more balanced in real life (my name is embroidered to the right of the heart on the real label):



And a close-up of the note to the baby and the dogs regarding this quilt:



I'm now working on "What A Bunch of Squares" - a quilt made of squares and other square-like shapes. No triangles. Just squares and rectangles. Because I am nothing if not a woman of my word. Photos of this quilt-in-progress another time.

Quilting! Who knew?

(Oh, right. Yes. You did.)