Back to the Beginning

Most of you know by now that the resurgence of my interest in quilting stems from my sister, Nancy's, masterpieces. I thought I would take you back in time to my first "quilty" project. At this time (circa 1997ish), I could not find any value in making quilts. If you needed to keep warm, go to the store and buy a blanket. While I treasured the quilt my grandmother made me, I could not see myself sitting to make a quilt.

Now you see, at that point in my life, I was VERY career driven. My job was my life, even above my family. I however LOVE fabric and colors and challenges. I was staying with my mom and dad (can I tell you how much I treasure that adult time with them before their health began to fail and I became the caregiver...) and traveling home to be with DH and DS and DD about every 4 to 6 weeks. As I said that was a different place and time in my life. Mom and dad had gone out of town for Labor Day weekend. Nancy and her husband still lived by mom and dad in the home we grew up in. Nancy and I had a long weekend off together and decided to play.

Now like I said I like a challenge. No easy beginner projects for me. And the project had to have meaning (explanation later). We got up in the sewing room, and started going through fabrics, some of hers, some of mom's. I don't remember if we actually bought any fabrics for this project.
We spent hours picking fabrics, and cutting out 1" squares of fabric (see, I was crazy even back then). This is the result of our marathon sewing weekend.....


Like I said earlier, the project had to have meaning. At this time in my life, I travelled constantly. Did not know what city I would be in next, and some weeks had to figure out what city I was in when I woke up in the morning. So, the Trip Around the World represented my travels at that time.

Now, even as driven as I was, I still cherished time at home, so...........




Here is home, my first paper pieced object. and we manufactured the fabric surrounding it from different fabrics that caught my eye. So you can see, there WAS a time in my life that brights spoke to me as loudly as Civil War repros and 30's repros do to me now.

Now Laurie Ann asked in my last post where we found the patterns for the 3" blocks and if they had to be hand pieced. The Fons and Porter website has some patterns drafted to 3" in the information about the contest. The rest I drafted from 12" down to 3" from the lastest issue of Sampler Quilts (ps I sent Nancy a copy of the magazine with her fabrics so she would not have to break her no quilt purchases this month). They do not have to be hand pieced, that was my choice. Nancy may do her's on the machine or by hand, that is her choice. We're just having fun and poking fun at each others choices. DH needs me to burn some pictures to CD for him, so guess I'll go do my good wife imitation...