Mad for Plaid

A recent post by fellow blogger Jeanne featured a green plaid fabric she has had in her stash for a long time.  I immediately recognized it as a fabric I also had in my stash. I had used it in a small wallhanging back when I was a new quilter.  It made me realize that this quilt was a good candidate for a "BTB - Before the Blog" post.

When I was first learning to quilt, my instructor told us to avoid plaids and stripes because they could be hard to work with.  I now know that she meant that advice mostly for beginners, but  knowing my personality, I also knew that unless I could keep the plaids all nice and straight in my finished quilt that they were not likely to be used in my quilts.

So how did I end up with a collection of plaid fabrics? Well, every month my quilt guild has a fabric raffle with a theme.  Members contribute a fat quarter to fit the theme, then the fabrics are divided up into several  packets and given to a few lucky winners.  One month the theme was "plaids".

I had one stray plaid fabric in my stash that I put into the fabric raffle that month,  hoping it would find a good home.  Guess who won the raffle?  Me, of course!  Now my one plaid fabric had turned into a half dozen or so.

I figured that the universe was trying to tell me that it was time to work with plaids.  So I challenged myself to make a quilt using only plaid fabrics.  I figured that if I kept the pieces small enough, I could cut very carefully and keep them lined up.

Next thing I knew, I was actually seeking out plaid fabrics at my nearest fabric store and buying small pieces to add to my new plaid stash.

I cut little snips of the plaids I had and stapled them to the back of a greeting card that I could carry with me as I shopped:

I decided on a Sawtooth Star block pattern, then chose pairs of light and dark plaid fabrics to make this little quilt:

The finished Sawtooth blocks measure 5 1/2 inches, and I handquilted it.

I was lucky enough to find the perfect backing fabric, a multi-plaid star fabric in all the right colors:

The Flying Geese units of the Sawtooth stars were made using a Flip and Sew technique.  As part of my sewing challenge to myself, I thought I would try using the little trimmed corners to make an even smaller quilt.  This little gem, made from the clipped corners,  has 2 1/2 inch finished stars: 

The points don't match, but the plaids are straight!  Anyhow, this little experiment in making miniature size blocks was not very successful, and I haven't tried using the clipped corners from a Flip and Sew technique again.  My sewing accuracy has definitely improved since then too!

And speaking of clipped, here is a photo of the two quilts side by side.

I don't know how I chopped off the left part of the mini in this photo.  

The plaid wallhanging has been hanging in my living room for a number of years, and looking at it today I realize the the blue/black check fabric I used for the border has faded quite a bit. On the right is a bit of the same border fabric that I still have in my stash. Big difference!

Despite the fading that shows it years, it's still a lovely little quilt that I enjoy very much.

Before The Blog: My first quilt

When I started blogging about 10 years ago, I saw it as a place to record my quilting endeavors and all that goes with that.  However, there are quilts that I made before I started blogging that I wish to document here so that all my quilting efforts can be found in one place.  I've decided to do a a series of posts to highlight the quilts that came BTB, or Before The Blog.

I guess the best place to start is with my very first quilt, a queen size Rail Fence:

I made this quilt in a Night School Community Ed class.  I just wanted to make one quilt.  I had no idea what it would lead to.

The class supply list came in the mail.  (yes, this was before the Internet.).  It was a Xerox copy of a hand written list that stated that I needed four fabrics.   The class list included some advice  about standing back and squinting to see if there was enough contrast. (a technique I still use today.)

I went to my local JoAnn's fabric store and stood in front of their giant wall of quilting cottons, trying to decide what I needed.  As I was pulling bolts and putting them in a pile, I remember asking the opinion of another customer who was also there in the quilt section.   I told her my plan was to just make this one quilt.  She stifled a small laugh.  "Just wait and see", she said, smiling.

Undaunted, I eventually chose these four fabrics for my "one and only" quilt.

The class was enjoyable, although most of the sewing was done at home.  At the last class we brought in our finished quilt tops and learned how to tie them.  For the batting, I chose a Mountain Mist product called "Fatt Batt" which was a very thick, and my quilt turned out more like a comforter than a quilt.

Only thing left was the binding.  I managed to get a double fold binding sewn on to the top side, but the idea of hand sewing the binding to the back, all around the perimeter of that queen sized quilt was daunting.  I decided to try to sew it down by machine.

Remember, this was before the Internet so I had no access to helpful websites or Youtube videos.  But perhaps that was a good thing, because I had no idea what a difficult process I was about to undertake.  Had I known how hard it would be to sew  a straight line while managing the weight of a bulky queen sized quilt  hanging off the edge of my little sewing table, the process of hand sewing the binding would have seemed easy in comparison.

Tons of pinning, and much arduous stitching later, I was finally done wrestling that queen sized monster underneath my presser foot. The binding actually looked pretty good from the top side, as I did a decent job of stitching in the seam line where the binding meets the quilt.  The back side was another story entirely.  It was not pretty, but it was done.

I had it on my bed for many years until the seams started to pull apart in a few places.  I no longer use it, but, I still have it stored away.

So that is the story of my first quilt.  I now understand what the lady in JoAnn's was smiling about.