Over a year ago I spoke with Carolyn on the phone. I tried to help her make her first quilt with a few suggestions and such. I received an email from her with pictures of the quilt she made and I couldn’t be more thrilled to share it with you!
Here is the email I received from her:
Hi Sarah,
As you can see from the date of your message to me (2/5/10), you helped me by answering some questions I had about making my first quilt! I had bought some charm packs of California Dreamin’ from your store and wanted to make a quilt for my sister’s birthday. You were kind enough to answer some of my questions over the phone, and then you sent me two pictures as suggestions of what I could do with the charm packs.
I am proud and excited to tell you that I finally finished the quilt!! I really wanted to show you what I did. (I think two of the pictures are sideways but I don’t know how to rotate them on here!) I added a white border around the charm square and then alternated a pink or green border around that. I also had bought material for the backing before I really knew what I was doing. When it was time to do the back, I found out it was only 42″ wide and the quilt was 54″ wide. So I had to make a border around the backing.
I also tried to stipple the quilt. I had taken a class on free motion quilting, but hadn’t been practicing. So, 30 minutes of stippling one section, ended up being 3 DAYS of ripping it out!! I then went with the grid pattern. I used 1″ painters tape and followed the line. After about 5 rows of that, I thought 1″ was too small so I ripped THAT out and used the 1.5″ tape. I used variegated quilting thread that matched the colors perfectly. My other sister noticed that right away which made me happy! I had no idea the quilting part would be so time consuming!
I made my own binding and followed your tutorial and that went fine. I also made a label with my embroidery machine. (I’m also new to that so it wasn’t the best!)
I presented it to my sister this weekend and she absolutely loved it! It was only one year, one month and a few weeks passed her birthday!
So THANK YOU so much for all your help and guidance. Your encouragement help give me courage to finish my very first quilt!!
Sincerely,
Carolyn
I can NOT even express how much it means to us, to hear back from you all. The stories, successes and failures {which always turn out to be successes too} are what keeps us going. We appreciate all of you. You are the reason why we are doing what we are doing.
Have a wonderful day.
~Sarah