I quilt

I never used to admit that I quilt because I thought it made me seem old, (and I don't need any help in that department) until I realized that I know more quilters who are younger than me than are older.

I'm going to be periodically sharing a quilt that I'm working on for my BonnieBlue. I'm following a tute on A Few Scraps (see My Blog List on the right), and this is going to be a way to keep me accountable. It's a tute about free motion quilting. I've only made 3 quilts, and I free-motion quilted 2 of them. I think I did pretty well. One was hearts, the other, meandering. I want to try big loopy flowers. Here is a picture of the quilt top I'm going to use for the tutorial.

It's a scrappy quilt. The middle row is made up of a bunch of great fabrics I used for a friend's baby quilt. I just kept sewing them together until I ran out, then I squared them off and sewed them together. The top and bottome rows are larger pieces from the same quilt, sewn together. I'm not so much into  making quilts with elaborate patterns, though I think I am going to give applique a try soon.

This one still needs a border. I've got two large swaths of fabric to choose from. one will be the border and binding, the other will be the backing. One is a gorgeous sunflower fabric, which I'm leaning towards being the backing. The other is more of the same of one of the fabrics in the quilt top. See the long strip of yellow in the right side of the quilt top? And the smaller strips in the bottom left and top right? That will make a great border. I think I may cut off some of the sunflower fabric to use as sashing, but I'm worried about the blue in the fabric not really matching the quilt top. It's these kinds of issues that drive me crazy. I'm just not good with color or design. Which begs the question, why do I quilt?

In other news, BonnieBlue had her first day of preschool today, and all went well! I didn't cry, she didn't cry, her preschool teacher didn't cry. Successful first day!