My first quilt!

Have you made a quilt before? If you have, I can guarantee you will remember that first quilt experience.

I stumbled into my first quilt. It was not planned at all. 

We love to travel, and in 2009 we ventured off to Japan. It was one of my top trips of all time. I loved the culture, the food and I had to buy new walking shoes because my feet hurt from full days of exploring. Always the traveller, I was also a collector of a keepsake, usually a Starbucks city mug or a magnet for the fridge!

Somehow I stumbled on fabric samples......well that's what I thought they were at the time. Later learning that in fact, they were Fat Quarters. I came home from that trip in September, with about ten different fat quarters with no idea what to make of them.

Inspiration hit in the most unlikely time while I was watching the infamous Better, Homes and Gardens (a weekly TV show in Australia). They were making a rag quilt. So the next day, off I went to the store to buy the magazine and get more details on how to make this quilt project. Next stop was the nearest Spotlight store to buy a sewing machine, more fabrics, batting, threads and all the notions I thought would be handy.

I made a quilt! It was huge! A Queen-sized quilt! It was a rag quilt, and somehow, with little knowledge of what I was doing, I managed to finish it in 3 months. The great thing I love about rag quilts is that when you finish sewing all the blocks together, you can bind it straight away - with no additional quilting necessary. 

Does it have mistakes - Yes!

But words of wisdom came from my sister-in-law – “it is handmade by you, no store-bought quilt would have this character”. To this day, whenever I see an imperfection, which with handmade items can happen and probably no one else notices - I always think of her wise words.