Today is our day on the Moda Love Blog Tour…..
Can you stand it? You folks don't know how close you came to missing this stop along the tour. We had a storm Friday and we lost power. The prediction was we wouldn't get power back until Tuesday or Wednesday. Fate intervened and power returned Sunday. We did what everyone does when they have been without power for 2 days, we cleaned out the fridge. Then we cleaned some more. Once the Simpson clean train starts - there is no stopping it. I'm not kidding. Here are 6 of the many windows we washed.
In keeping with the theme of this Blog Hop - I HATE washing windows, but I LOVE a clean house.
Do you remember way back in June when we showed you this? The quilt we made with a Lexington Layer Cake™?
This is the
free pattern to make your own quilt out of a Layer Cake™
Moda asked us to answer some questions on this Blog Tour……
When did you start quilting? Tell us about your first quilt.
I made my first quilt at the age of 14 - over 42 years ago.
Let that sink in a bit.
I saw a quilt in a magazine. It was a Woman's Day that was picked up at the grocery store. There was a picture of an antique quilt thrown over a chair. This is for you, Barb and Mary! (Barb and Mary, of Me and My Sister Designs, have an infamous Instagram project where they post a lot of quilts on chairs)
It was a pieced quilt (I didn't even know what that meant yet) of indeterminate design. All I remember was that it was beautiful, it was made of fabric, and I LOVED it. I NEEDED to make one. This wasn't as clear cut as it would seem. Nobody I knew made quilts. Nobody I knew even owned one. I started my research at the library and checked out the 2 or 3 quilt books that were known to exist at the time. I skimmed the pages. I even read some of the text. Mostly I looked at the pictures.
With no fabric stash, I had to start collecting. I begged, borrowed, but did not steal fabric scraps from all who would cooperate. Soon, I started to buy fabric. The only fabric store that I knew of at that time was Kresge's Department store. The saleswomen soon learned of my project - and scattered when I walked to the cutting table. I asked for an 1/8th of a yard of just about anything that didn't look too slippery. This was 1972. Polyester was king. The fact that I even found cotton or cotton blends is a miracle.
The easiest looking diagram in the book was a one-patch. There was no such thing a rotary cutter or cutting board yet. With scissors in hand I cut out hundreds of patches "by eye". Rulers, pencils and such just seemed a little too much like math class. I forged ahead. With the aid of a neighbors sewing machine it was pieced. It was sort of rectangular-ish.
Next, I looked at those diagrams of a quilt top in some contraption called a quilt frame. "Did anyone have a quilt frame?" I asked. You could have heard a quilting needle drop.
There had to be another way. Another neighbor said ALL quilts were tied. She sounded like an expert and I took her advice. The quilt was tied in an afternoon with a bed sheet for the back, a thick polyester batt, and some acrylic yarn. The quilt fit my bed and lasted my High School years, my college years and a few years after that. It became a favorite cat bed. Eventually the un-natural fiber disaster started to disintegrate and I threw it away. When my husband Bill took out the trash that evening he spotted it and saved it. My first quilt now lives in a bag at the top of the closet. Thanks Bill.
Did making a quilt this way - at this age - make any sense at all? No it didn't.
It was meant to be because it was true LOVE.
If you comment here about this quilt, your first quilt, your last quilt, or something that you LOVE - you can win this….
A Lexington Layer Cake™ or a Lexington Jelly Roll™ - designed by Polly and I for Moda Fabrics. (A company we LOVE)
Make sure you stop by to visit
Thanks for stopping by
Laurie
