You Have To Start Somewhere - My Early Quilts #6


Welcome back to my You Have To Start Somewhere posts, where I am documenting my early quilts.  This is the last of the quilts that I have in my possession and really is the last of those that I made before my mini-quilting hiatus between 2000-2010.

If you were following along in my last post, I mentioned that I made three quilts as part of an Independent Study program in college.  I shared the other two quilts in last week's post and the third is the focus here.

Geometrics, 1999



The inspiration for this quilt came out of a coloring book that was filled with geometric designs.  The process to turn this into a quilt was time-consuming; but not hard.  It started with enlarging the image on the photocopier until it was the size I wanted, taping lots of pages together.  I then lettered and numbered each of the individual pieces, also noting whether they would be a color or black.  This was done prior to cutting them out and would help ensure that I could get them all back together and in the right order.

On the fabric, I then traced around all of the individual shapes, adding the 1/4" seam allowance.  When it came time to cut them out, using the rotary cutter was not really an option, since the pieces were all quite different.  While these shapes were all pieced by machine, I do remember using the seam ripper a lot. Anyone who has sewn triangles, or trapezoids knows how tricky it can be to match those points.  



Once I had these coordinating shapes pieced into large blocks of color/black, I needle-turn appliqued them onto the black background.  If you look at the photo above, along the edge where the yellow meets the orange, you can see this detail.  

As for holding the batting and backing together, I quilted 1 row about a 1/2" away from my applique, outlining the black negative space found in the NE, SE, SW and NW corners of the quilt.  At least I didn't tie this one...hahaha!



As for the backing fabric, aren't those polka-dots grand...more like hideous, right!

My binding methods hadn't changed very much as I still folded the quilt top around to the back; but at least I squared things up this time.

I actually LOVE this quilt for it's aesthetic appeal and my ability to stick with it, considering how labor intensive it turned out to be.

There is a part of me that wants to rip out what little quilting I did do, add cotton batting and properly quilt it...giving it a new life.  But then, this little piece of my history would be gone and the juxtaposition of such a meticulously pieced front mixed with such rough quilting and binding skills says a lot about my quilting journey.







**This post belongs to a small series I've created to share some of the first quilts that I made, not only for documentation purposes; but to show that we all have to start somewhere**

Early Quilt #6 (You are here)