Friday, August 8, 2014

Quilty Flashback Friday



When I saw that Elizabeth was doing a little flashback Friday- quilt edition, I couldn't help but join in the fun!  When I sorted back through my pictures on Flickr, all the way back to the spring of 2010, it was certainly a walk down memory lane!  Those first few projects made me chuckle, and remember how I knew absolutely nothing and was completely flying by the seat of my pants!

gender neutral baby quilt

This was my very first quilt I ever finished, and from the looks of it, it actually doesn't look all that bad, but boy did it have its issues!  I remember sewing the blocks together with a "1/4" seam allowance, or more like a 1/4ish seam allowance, because I can distinctly remember going to piece the rows together and nothing matched up!  My blocks were off by a good half of an inch. I'm pretty sure I just hacked away and had a total Tim Gunn make it work moment.

layout of quilt top

This must have been post block hacking because things seem to align pretty well!  I also remember having absolutely no idea about fabric quality.  I can remember purchasing what I now know are Jelly Rolls of fabric off of Ebay in these 3 colors along with some calico prints I picked up at Joann's.

I wish I would have taken a picture of this, but I learned a quick lesson about fabric quality, when after finishing the quilt and then washing it, after I took it out of the dryer, there was a GIANT hole in one of the fabrics!  My husband can confirm that I definitely cried.  It was the strangest thing, it was almost like I dropped bleach on it and the fabric just shredded!  Still to this day I have never had anything like that happen, and cannot figure out what went wrong, but from then on my eyes were then opened to the world of quilt shop quality fabric.

gender neutral baby quilt

Needless to say, this quilt never saw its intended recipient, and I'm not even sure what happened to it, but it was sure fun visiting my first quilt ever in photos!

10 comments:

  1. Love the "ish" - I was all about that 1/4-ish seam allowance when I started too :) I'm impressed with your pictures - that was the thing that seemed super consistent about my old pictures was how terrible they all were!! And oh my about the hole! That's definitely the kind of thing you don't forget. Thanks so much for playing along with Quilty Flashback Friday :)

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  2. Psst - and don't forget to add your link to the linky on my blog :) Hope you're having a super day!

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  3. I know exactly what you mean about the 1/4-ish seam allowance! My sewing machine that I used for years only had metric measurements and at the beginning I just kind of used any old random seam allowance until I realized what a mess that created for final piecing. Then I spent way too long experimenting with what a 1/4-in on my machine actually looked like! I am so sorry to hear about the hole! Such a bummer. I probably would have "appliqued" down a patch with a zig-zag and moved on - that was definitely my style for years. :)

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  4. Oh dear, nothing worse than your washing machine dining on your quilt!

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  5. I think it looks great as a first quilt! Too bad about the fabric, but at least you have pictures.

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  6. It looks great in the pics. I love the color choice. I have had that shredding thing happen to me only once also. Yikes!

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  7. The quilt looks great! Too bad about the hole - I've never tried to fix any of them on mine....I have a table topper I made 12 years ago. my seams obviously weren't precise as there are a few gaps...I just popped a safety pin at the hole to mark where I needed to mend - but I kept using the topper and still haven't repaired the oops.

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  8. Love the quilt. I had to make a quilt for my grand daughter who was in the NICU. She was born almost a month early. I didn't have my stash available so we went to JoAnns and got fabric. Four of them did fine but one when I washed it just shredded. I had to take fabric and appliqué it over the pieces that were real bad. I generally buy most fabric from my local quilt shop.

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  9. Hooray for make it work moments- this is fab!

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  10. That's exactly the reason I started a blog - to keep track of the quils. Going back makes me cringe a bit though :)

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